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Dessert

Strawberry Pie

A fruit pie made with fresh strawberries, sugar, flour, butter, water, and a double crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Strawberry Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Hull the strawberries and avoid washing them to preserve flavor.

  2. Line a pie plate with the bottom crust and fill it with the strawberries.

  3. Sprinkle the strawberries with sugar, flour, and small pieces of butter.

  4. Add a few tablespoons of water over the filling.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cover with the top crust.

  2. Wet the edges of the bottom crust. Press the crusts together.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

Cool and serve

  1. Let cool.

  2. Dust with powdered sugar if desired.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. 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

Strawberries
Provide the main filling, flavor and bulk of the pie.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps draw out juices from the berries.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the juices released by the strawberries as the pie bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the filling.
Pie crust
Forms the structure that holds the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the pie cool before cutting. As the pie cools, the juices thicken around the flour and starch. Cutting it early lets the filling run out and stay runny.

“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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