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Dessert

Grape Pie

A fruit pie made with grapes, sugar, flour, egg, butter, and two pie crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Grape 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg, flour, sugar, and butter until well combined.

  2. Add the cooked and seeded grapes to the mixture and stir gently.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the filling into one pie crust and cover with the second crust.

  2. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until the crust is 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + grapetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,028 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Grapes
Provide the fruit filling and its sweet, juicy flavor once cooked.
Egg
Helps bind the filling so it holds together when sliced.
Flour
Thickens the juices released by the grapes as the pie bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the grapes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to flavor and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Bake until the crust is golden brown. Baking long enough sets the thickened filling and fully cooks the crust. Underbaking leaves the filling runny and the bottom crust pale and doughy.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, sugar, butter. 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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