Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Strawberry 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 the crust
Bake a rich pie crust at 400°F (200°C).
Make the filling
While the crust is baking, beat the egg whites until stiff.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks with the sugar until well combined.
Mix the beaten egg whites with the yolk and sugar mixture, and beat thoroughly.
Add the strawberries to the mixture and stir gently.
Bake and serve
Pour the mixture into the hot pie crust and bake 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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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Whipped whites give the filling lightness and help it set into a soft, airy custard.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the beaten yolks.
- Strawberries
- Provide the main fruit flavour, moisture and colour to the filling.
The step that matters
Folding the beaten egg whites into the yolk mixture. Whites hold air only when beaten stiff, and overmixing or deflating them makes the filling dense and less airy. Mixing too roughly also knocks out the air that lifts the filling as it bakes.
“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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