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Dessert

Cranberry Pie

A pie filled with raw cranberries, molasses, and sugar baked until bubbly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cranberry 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).

  2. Line a pie dish with the pie crust.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the crust with raw cranberries.

  2. Add molasses and sugar over the cranberries.

  3. Bake for 30-40 minutes until the filling is bubbly.

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. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw cranberries
Provide the tart fruit base and most of the filling's bulk.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the cranberries' tartness.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark flavor and moisture to the filling.
Pie crust
Forms a base that holds the filling in the dish.

The step that matters

Bake until the filling is bubbly. Cranberries need sustained heat to soften and release their juices, which then mix with the sugar and molasses and thicken. Stopping when the filling is only warm leaves the fruit firm and the juices thin.

“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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