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 ↓
Cherry Pie
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Line a pie dish with the crust.
Fill and cover
Fill the crust with ripe sour cherries and sweeten to taste.
Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of flour on top of the cherries.
Cover with a puff pastry and seal the edges.
Bake
Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.
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.
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sour cherries
- Provide the main fruit filling and its tart flavour.
- Flour
- Thickens the cherry juices as the pie bakes, so the filling sets.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the tart cherries and balances their acidity.
- Puff pastry
- Forms the flaky top crust that browns in the oven.
The step that matters
Sprinkle the flour over the cherries. Flour must be spread evenly over the juicy fruit so it can absorb the liquid and thicken it. Unevenly placed flour can leave pockets of runny or pasty filling.
“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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