Skip to main content
Dessert

Vinegar Pie

A sweet and tart pie made with sugar, eggs, flour, butter, vinegar, lemon juice, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Vinegar Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Cream together sugar, egg yolks, flour, butter, and a little water in a bowl.

  2. Boil 1 cup of water with 3 tablespoons of vinegar in a saucepan.

  3. Add the creamed mixture and 1 teaspoon of lemon juice to the boiling water, then pour the filling into a pre-baked pie crust.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and spread over the filling.

  2. Brown the pie in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

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 + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and add richness as they set with the heat.
Flour
Thickens the creamy filling so it holds its shape when cut.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture in the filling.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Adding the creamed mixture to the boiling water. Flour-thickened fillings need to be stirred while they heat so the starch swells evenly and does not clump or stay raw-tasting. Adding the mixture to a rapidly boiling liquid can also cause lumps, so the filling should be whisked as it thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, butter, vinegar. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes