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Dessert

Ripe Currant Pie

A pie made with currants, sugar, soda crackers, and eggs, topped with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Ripe Currant Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pie

  1. Line a pie dish with the pie crust.

  2. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of sugar over the bottom.

  3. Pour in 1 pint of currants.

  4. Sprinkle 5 tablespoons of sugar over the currants.

  5. Add the crushed soda cracker.

  6. Cover with the upper crust.

Bake and frost

  1. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Alternatively, mash 1 cup of ripe currants with 1 cup of sugar and 2 tablespoons of water.

  3. Mix in 1 tablespoon of flour beaten with 2 egg yolks.

  4. Bake.

  5. Frost the top with beaten egg whites and 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar.

  6. Brown in the oven.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Currant + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

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

  5. Currant + flourtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

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

Currants
Provide the tart fruit flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the currants and helps draw out their juice.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mashed currant filling and add richness.
Egg whites
Form a light frosting that browns in the oven.
Flour
Helps thicken the filling so it holds its shape when cut.

The step that matters

Brown in the oven. Egg white frosting can scorch quickly at high heat or stay pale if underbaked. Watch the top closely so it turns golden, since the sugar caramelises and the proteins brown together.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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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