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Dessert

Pieplant Pie

A pie made with pieplant, sugar, flour, lemon rind, lemon juice, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓

Pieplant Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the crust

  1. Mix ½ cup sugar and 1 heaping teaspoon flour together and sprinkle over the bottom crust.

  2. Add the cut pieplant and sprinkle another ½ cup sugar and 1 heaping teaspoon flour on top.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 45 minutes.

Make the filling

  1. Stew the pieplant, then sweeten the stew.

  2. Add lemon rind and juice.

  3. Add the yolks of 2 eggs.

Finish and frost

  1. Bake.

  2. Frost like lemon pie.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Pieplant
Provides the tart flavor and the moisture that forms the filling.
White sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the pieplant's sourness.
Flour
Thickens the juices released by the pieplant as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the filling as they set with heat.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Add the yolks of 2 eggs. Egg yolks thicken the filling by setting with heat, but they can scramble if added to a very hot stew. Stir them in gently and keep the filling from boiling hard.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, 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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