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Dessert

Raisin Pie

A sweet pie with a filling of raisins, lemon, molasses, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Raisin Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Grate the yellow part of the lemon, discarding the white rind and seeds.

  2. Chop the remaining lemon and combine it with the raisins, salt, butter, molasses, brown sugar, and water in a pot.

  3. Boil the mixture for 5 minutes.

  4. Thicken the filling with flour, stirring well.

Bake and serve

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Butter and flour 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

Raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness to the filling.
Molasses
Adds deep, dark sweetness and a caramel-like flavour to the filling.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds moisture and molasses-like depth.
Flour
Thickens the cooked filling so it sets rather than running when sliced.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aromatic citrus oils that brighten the sweet filling.

The step that matters

Thicken the filling with flour, stirring well. Flour must be fully dispersed in the hot liquid to avoid lumps; stirring keeps starch granules separated so they swell evenly and thicken the filling uniformly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, butter, molasses, sugar, flour. 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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