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Dessert

Raisin Pie

A simple raisin pie made by cooking sugar, egg, vinegar, flour, raisins, and boiling water with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, egg, vinegar, flour, raisins, and boiling water.

  2. Add a lump of butter and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thick.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

Egg
Thickens and binds the filling as it heats and sets.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, spreadable filling as its starch swells.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture, and moisture to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the filling.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the filling.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thick. Flour and egg thicken as they heat, but they can clump or scramble if the heat is too high or the mixture is left unstirred. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the filling thickens smoothly.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Lemonfits less well

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

More raisin pie recipes

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