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Dessert

Mock Cherry Pie

A pie made with raisins, cranberries, sugar, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Mock Cherry Pie

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stew the raisins and cranberries together for 15 minutes or longer.

  2. Add the white sugar and stir well.

  3. Thicken the mixture with flour.

  4. Add the walnut-sized piece of butter and mix until combined.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

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

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

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Cranberries
Provide the tart, fruity flavor and bulk that stands in for cherries in the filling.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness that softens as the filling stews.
White sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the cranberries.
Flour
Thickens the cooking juices so the filling sets rather than running out of the pie.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished filling.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour. Flour must be cooked in the hot juices long enough to swell and gelatinize its starch. If it is added to a mixture that is not hot enough or stirred poorly, it can clump or leave a raw, pasty taste and the filling may stay thin.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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