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Dessert

Raisin Pie

A fruit pie with raisins cooked in water and sugar, thickened with flour, finished with butter and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Make the filling

  1. Combine raisins, water, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. In a bowl, mix flour with 5 tablespoons of water until smooth.

  4. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling raisins, stirring constantly.

  5. Add butter and vinegar, and cook for 2-3 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the filling between two pie crusts and bake.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

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

Raisins
Provide the main body of the filling and their sweetness.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, sliceable filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the raisins as they cook.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet raisin flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the boiling raisins. Flour clumps if added to hot liquid without constant stirring. Keeping the mixture moving disperses the starch so it thickens evenly and smoothly.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Apricotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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.

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