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 ↓
Prune Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Stew the prunes and remove the pits.
Line a pie plate with the crust.
Fill and bake
Fill the crust with the prunes.
Add ½ cup of sugar and ¼ teaspoon of salt.
Sprinkle flour over the top.
Cover with another crust and bake.
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
- Prunes
- Provide the main filling, with sweetness and body once stewed.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the prunes.
- Flour
- Sprinkled over the filling to thicken the juices as the pie bakes.
- Pie crust
- Forms the structure that holds the filling, top and bottom.
“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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