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Dessert

Berry Pie

A fruit pie with berries, sugar, butter, nutmeg, and optional water or molasses, baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Berry 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

  1. Line a deep pie plate with pie crust.

  2. Fill it half full with berries.

  3. Add sugar, salt, butter, and nutmeg.

  4. Fill the plate with more berries and additional sugar.

  5. Add water or molasses if desired.

  6. Cover with another layer of pie crust and cut two or three slits in it.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

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 + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Nutmeg + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,850 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Berries
Provide the main filling, bringing fruit flavour, moisture and bulk to the pie.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps draw out juices from the berries.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the filling, rounding out the flavour.
Pie crust
Forms the structure that holds the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Cut slits in the top crust. Slits let steam escape while the berries cook. Without them, pressure can build under the crust and push filling out or make the top soggy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Clovefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, molasses. 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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