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Dessert

Cranberry Pie

A fruit pie with cranberries, sugar, water, and flour in a pie crust, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Cranberry Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Split each cranberry in half with a sharp knife until you have 2 cups.

  2. In a bowl, combine cranberries, sugar, water, and flour; stir well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the pie crust.

  2. Cover with a second crust and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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 + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Cranberries
Provide the main fruit body and the tart flavor of the filling.
White sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the cranberries' tartness.
Sifted flour
Thickens the juices released by the cranberries as the pie bakes.
Pie crust
Holds the filling and browns in the oven to form the top and base.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the cranberries. Flour clumps when it meets wet fruit, and clumps do not thicken evenly. Stirring well spreads the flour through the juices so the filling sets smoothly instead of leaving pockets of raw starch.

“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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