Name: Sour Cream Pie
Ingredients: 1 cup sour cream; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 cup sugar; ½ teaspoon cinnamon; 1 cup stoned raisins; ½ teaspoon nutmeg; 1 egg; 1 teaspoon cloves; 1 tablespoon vinegar

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the filling

In a bowl, mix sour cream, salt, sugar, cinnamon, raisins, nutmeg, egg, cloves, and vinegar until well combined.
Pour the mixture into a prepared pie crust.

Bake

Bake with both upper and lower crust until 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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour cream: Adds richness and moisture, giving the filling a creamy body.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the filling set smoothly.
Egg: Binds the filling and helps it set firm when baked.
Raisins: Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the filling.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg, clove, vinegar):

Vanillafits better
Raisinthe original
Figfits about as well
Quincefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg, clove, vinegar. 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.