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Dessert

Fruit Pie

A fruit pie made with currants, raisins, apples, peaches, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fruit Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Wash the currants and raisins.

  2. In a saucepan, combine currants, raisins, sugar, and water; boil gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in vinegar, spices, apples, rolled crackers, and pickled peaches.

Bake

  1. Fill two pie crusts with the mixture and bake until golden.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweet-tart fruit flavour as they simmer.
Seeded raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness as they soften in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps thicken the syrup as it boils down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the filling.
Chopped apples
Provide body and moisture that soften during baking.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 30 minutes. Simmering the currants, raisins, sugar and water slowly draws out fruit flavour and softens the fruit. A hard boil can scorch the sugar and dry the mixture, so keep it at a gentle simmer.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, clove, allspice, nutmeg. 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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