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Dessert

Raisin Pie

A pie filled with raisins cooked in water, sugar, lemon juice, and flour, baked in two crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. Cook the raisins in 1 quart of water for 20 minutes.

  2. Add 1½ cups of sugar and the juice of 1 lemon.

  3. Mix 3 tablespoons of flour with ½ cup of water and add to the mixture.

  4. Cook until the filling is clear and smooth.

Bake

  1. Bake the filling with 2 pie crusts.

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

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

  3. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and sweet fruit flavor of the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the filling its body.
Flour
Thickens the filling as it cooks, giving it a smooth, set texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet raisin flavor.
Pie crusts
Form the pastry that encloses and holds the filling.

The step that matters

Thicken the filling with flour and water. Flour must be mixed with water before it goes in, so it disperses without lumps. Cooking until the filling turns clear and smooth shows the starch has fully thickened it.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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