Name: Cherry Pie
Ingredients: 1 pie crust; 2 cups ripe, stoned cherries; 1 cup sugar; 1 teaspoon sifted flour; 2 tablespoons butter

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cherry Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Line a pie plate with the crust.
Fill it half full with cherries.
Sprinkle sugar and flour over the cherries.
Dot with butter.
Fill the crust to the top with more cherries.
Cover with the upper crust and bake.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cherries: Provide the main filling, with fruit flavor, tartness and juice that sets as it bakes.
Sugar: Sweetens the cherries and draws out juice that the flour helps thicken.
Flour: Thickens the cherry juices as the pie bakes so the filling holds together.
Butter: Adds richness and fat that melts into the filling and adds flavor.
Pie crust: Forms the base and top that hold the filling in.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.