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Dessert

Plum Pie

A fruit pie made with seeded plums, sugar, flour, and a rich crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar 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 ↓

Plum Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Line a pie pan with the rich pie crust.

  3. Sprinkle a little flour and sugar over the bottom of the crust.

  4. Fill the crust with seeded plums.

Fill and bake

  1. Sprinkle 1 cup of sugar and 2 tablespoons of flour over the plums.

  2. Cover with a top crust and bake in the preheated 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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + plumtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + plumtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rich pie crust
Forms the structure of the pie and, with its fat, gives a tender, flaky texture.
Flour
Thickens the plum juices so the filling sets rather than running out of the pie.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and draws moisture from the plums, helping the filling thicken.
Plums
Provide the main fruit flavor, tartness, and the juices that make up the filling.

The step that matters

Sprinkling flour and sugar over the plums before covering. Flour and sugar mixed into the fruit juices thicken the filling as it bakes. Without this layer, the juices can stay thin and run out of the crust, leaving a soggy bottom and a watery pie.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar. 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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