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Dessert

Sour Cream Pie

A sweet pie with a sour cream filling and meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,070 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Sour Cream 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 the filling

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

  2. In a bowl, combine sour cream, chopped raisins, sugar, egg yolks, and ground cloves.

  3. Line a pie plate with pastry and fill it with the mixture.

Bake and top with meringue

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until set.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form and spread over the pie.

  3. Return to the oven and bake until the meringue is lightly browned.

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 + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  5. Raisin + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sour cream
Provides moisture and tang, giving the filling a creamy, rich body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they set during baking, giving it structure.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks to form the meringue topping, which lightly browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the meringue brown lightly.
Chopped raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until the filling is set. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with heat. Underbaking leaves the filling runny, while overbaking can make it weep or turn grainy. Check for a set center before adding the meringue.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, raisin, sugar, 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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