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Dessert

Whortleberry Pie

A pie filled with whortleberries, sugar, nutmeg, and pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 23,364 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Whortleberry 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.

Prepare

  1. Line a deep pie plate with pastry.

  2. Fill the plate with whortleberries.

  3. Strew an abundance of sugar over the berries.

  4. Add a sprinkle of nutmeg.

Bake

  1. Bake gently at 350°F (175°C) until the filling is bubbly.

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. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Whortleberries
Provide the main filling, releasing juice that thickens into a bubbly sauce as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the berries and draws out their juices, adding to the syrupy filling.
Pastry for pie
Forms the crust that holds the filling in the plate while it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake gently until bubbly. Gentle heat lets the berries soften and release juice slowly so the filling cooks through and thickens. Too much heat can scorch the crust before the filling sets.

“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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