Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Cherry Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the filling
Stone the cherries.
Line deep pie plates with pie crust.
Nearly fill the plates with cherries.
Sprinkle 4 tablespoons of sugar over each pie.
Dredge lightly with flour.
Assemble and bake
Cover each pie with a thin upper crust.
Make a vent in the center of the crust.
Press the edges together to seal.
Bake until golden and serve the same day.
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.
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cherries
- Provide the fruit filling, with their juices softening and flavouring the pie.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the filling and helps draw out cherry juice as the pie bakes.
- Flour
- Dredged over the filling to lightly thicken the juices as they release.
- Pie crust
- Forms the bottom and top shell that holds the filling and browns in the oven.
The step that matters
Sealing and venting the top crust. Pressing the edges together keeps juices from leaking out during baking, and the center vent lets steam escape so the crust doesn't swell or burst and the filling stays thick.
“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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