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Dessert

Mock Cherry Pie

A pie made with cranberries, raisins, sugar, flour, boiling water, vanilla, and two pie crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Mock Cherry Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a pot, combine cranberries, raisins, sugar, and flour.

  2. Pour in boiling water and boil the mixture together.

  3. Once cool, stir in vanilla.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the filling into a pie crust and cover with the second crust.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

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

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cranberries
Provide tart flavor and a chewy, juicy texture as they soften in the filling.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy body, plumping as they absorb the hot liquid.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the cranberries.
Flour
Thickens the boiling liquid into a filling that holds its shape when sliced.
Pie crusts
Form the enclosing shell and top that hold the filling while it bakes and browns.

The step that matters

Boil the filling with the flour. Flour thickens only when the liquid reaches a boil and is stirred, so the filling must be fully boiled to set properly. Undercooked flour leaves the filling runny and starchy-tasting once cooled.

“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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