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Dessert

Pie-plant Pie

A pie made from stewed pie-plant, cream, sugar, rolled crackers, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Pie-plant 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the stewed pie-plant, cream, sugar, rolled crackers, and eggs until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie dish and bake without an upper crust for about 30-40 minutes, or until set.

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Stewed pie-plant
Provides the tart flavour and most of the moisture in the filling.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the filling its structure and firm texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, softening the tartness and giving a smoother texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the pie-plant.
Rolled crackers
Absorb liquid and thicken the filling so it holds its shape when set.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs firm as they heat, so the filling is done when it no longer wobbles in the centre. Pulling it out too early leaves it runny, while overbaking can make it dry and rubbery.

“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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