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Dessert

Raisin Pie

A sweet pie filling made from raisins, sugar, lemon juice, water, flour, butter, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raisin Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a pot, combine the raisins, sugar, lemon juice, and boiling water.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat.

  3. In a small bowl, mix the flour with a little cold water to make a paste.

  4. Add the flour paste to the boiling mixture and stir well.

  5. Once it boils again, add a small piece of butter and a little grated nutmeg.

Cool

  1. Let the filling cool before using it to make pies.

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 + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Raisins
Provide the main body of the filling and sweetness as they soften in the liquid.
Flour
Thickens the filling as it heats, giving it a set, spoonable texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the sugar and raisins.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps balance the tartness of the lemon.

The step that matters

Stir the flour paste into the boiling mixture. Flour thickens only when heated with liquid. Adding the paste to a boiling mixture and stirring well keeps it smooth, while lumps form if it is not fully mixed in.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, flour, butter, nutmeg. 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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