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Dessert

Seedless Grape Pie

A pie made with seedless Concord grapes, egg yolks, sugar, and a meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Seedless Grape Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Make a pie crust and bake it until golden.

Make the filling

  1. Wash and skin the Concord grapes, then cook them until the skins break.

  2. Pass the cooked grapes through a sieve to remove seeds, saving the juice.

  3. Mix the grape pulp with the beaten egg yolks and sugar to taste.

  4. Fill the baked crust with the grape mixture and bake for 10 minutes.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add 2 tablespoons of sugar and spread over the pie.

  2. Brown the meringue in the 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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Grape + sugartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,490 recipes

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

  3. Grape + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Concord grapes
Provide the main flavor and the pulp that forms the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the grape pulp as it sets, giving the filling body.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam that forms the meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the meringue whites stay stable.

The step that matters

Browning the meringue. Meringue can weep or turn tough if the whites are under-beaten or overbaked. Beat until stiff peaks form and watch closely so it browns without drying out.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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