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Dessert

Raisin Pie

A simple raisin pie made with lemon, sugar, egg, flour, raisins, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raisin Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select large, soft raisins.

  2. Soak raisins in cold water for 2 hours.

Make the filling

  1. Beat the egg until light, then mix in sugar.

  2. Add lemon juice and grated lemon rind to the egg mixture.

  3. Stir in flour, then add soaked raisins and their water.

  4. Cook the mixture until it thickens.

Bake

  1. Bake in two pie crusts.

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.

  1. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Set when cooked, helping the filling firm up and hold its shape.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds body to the mixture.
Flour
Thickens the filling as it cooks.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and sweetness once plumped in water.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture until it thickens. Flour starch swells and egg proteins set during cooking, which is what thickens the filling. Stopping too early leaves it runny and unset, while overheating can make the egg curdle and turn grainy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, flour, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

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