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Dessert

Cherry Pie

A custard pie filled with cherry juice and eggs, baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cherry and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 890 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Cherry Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Partially bake the pie crust.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with cornstarch, cherry juice, and sugar until well combined.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold into the cherry mixture.

  3. Add vanilla extract and mix gently.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the cherry filling into the crust and bake until the custard is set.

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. Cherry + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together890 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Cherry + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness and a smooth set when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lightness and airy structure to the filling.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cherry juice so the custard holds its shape when set.
Cherry juice
Provides the main liquid and cherry flavor for the filling.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the cherry mixture. Folding gently keeps the whipped egg whites full of air. Stirring or deflating them makes the filling dense and less light after baking.

Swap the cherry

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, vanilla. 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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