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Dessert

Lemon Raisin Pie

A fruit pie filled with lemon zest, pulp, raisins, and sugar, baked between two pie crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Lemon Raisin Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the rind of the lemon and chop the pulp finely.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the lemon rind, lemon pulp, raisins, sugar, water, and beaten egg, and mix all ingredients well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the mixture between two pie crusts.

  2. Bake until the crust is golden brown.

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

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

  2. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma that balance the sweet raisin filling.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture and moisture to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps give it a thick, jammy body.
Egg
Binds the filling and sets it into a sliceable mass as it bakes.
Pie crusts
Hold the filling in place and brown in the oven to form the outer structure.

The step that matters

Bake until the crust is golden brown. The beaten egg must be heated through to set the filling. Pulling the pie early leaves a runny centre, while the golden crust shows the surface has browned.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, egg. 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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