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Dessert

Sour Cream Pie

A sweet pie with sour cream, sugar, raisins, and spices baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sour Cream 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. Beat the egg with the salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

  3. Add the sour cream and sugar to the egg mixture and mix well.

  4. Stir in the raisins.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a prepared lower pie crust.

  2. Bake until set, about 30‑40 minutes.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Sets the custard as it bakes, giving the filling its body and structure.
Sour cream
Adds richness and moisture, and a tangy flavour that balances the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and contributes to its smooth, soft texture.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken the filling as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves a runny centre, while overbaking can make the custard curdle, weep, or crack, so watch for a set edge with a slight wobble in the middle.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, 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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