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Dessert

Raisin Pie

A fruit pie made with raisins or prunes, lemon, sugar, flour, and egg, baked in pie crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raisin Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. In a pot, pour 1 quart of boiling water over the raisins or prunes and cook until tender, adding water as needed to maintain 1 quart.

  2. In a bowl, mix the grated lemon rind, lemon juice, sugar, flour, and egg until well combined.

Fill and bake

  1. Use the mixture to fill three pie crusts.

  2. Bake the pies according to your pie crust recipe.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Raisins or prunes
Provide the main body and sweetness of the filling as they soften in water.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the lemon.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma from the juice and grated rind.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it holds together when sliced.
Egg
Binds the filling and helps it set as it bakes.

The step that matters

Maintaining the cooking water. Adding water as needed keeps the level at one quart, so the fruit softens fully without drying or scorching. Too little liquid can leave the fruit tough and the pot prone to burning.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits about as well

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