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Dessert

Sour Cream Pie

A pie filled with a mixture of sour cream, sugar, raisins, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,070 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Sour Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Beat the yolks of 4 eggs with 1 cup of sour cream, 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of seedless raisins, and ½ teaspoon of ground cloves.

  2. Add a pinch of salt.

Bake and top

  1. Pour the mixture into an open pie crust.

  2. Bake until set.

  3. Whip the 2 egg whites to make meringue and spread on top of the pie after baking.

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 + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + raisintop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they set, giving it a rich, custardy body.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, keeping the filling soft and creamy.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it set smoothly.
Seedless raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the filling.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the meringue topping.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Underbaking leaves the egg-yolk filling runny, while overbaking can make it curdle or weep. The filling should set just firm, with a slight wobble at the centre, before the meringue is added.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, sugar, 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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