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Dessert

Raisin Pie

A simple no-bake dessert made with raisins, lemon, sugar, water, and rolled crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Raisin Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stone the raisins.

  2. Boil the raisins in water to soften.

Assemble the filling

  1. Combine lemon juice, lemon rind, raisins, rolled crackers, and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Mix well until combined.

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

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

  2. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Provide the main sweet, chewy body of the filling once softened.
Rolled crackers
Absorb liquid and thicken the mixture so it holds together without baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet raisin filling.
Lemon rind
Adds fragrant citrus aroma from the oils in the peel.

The step that matters

Boil the raisins until soft. Raisins that are not fully softened stay firm and do not blend evenly into the filling. Softening them in water first lets them break down and distribute their sweetness and moisture through the crackers and sugar.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar. 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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