Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Blackberry Pie
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the filling
Pick over and wash the blackberries, then drain all the water off.
For each cup of blackberries, add ½ cup of sugar, adjusting based on the sourness and ripeness of the berries.
Assemble and bake
Line a pie tin with plain pie dough and fill it with the blackberry mixture.
Dot the filling with several small pieces of butter.
Cover with a top crust and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown and the filling bubbles through the crust.
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.
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Blackberries
- Make up the bulk of the filling and supply the tart flavor and juices.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the tart berries and balances their sourness.
- Butter
- Adds richness and flavor as it melts into the hot filling.
- Plain pie dough
- Forms the crust that holds the filling and browns in the oven.
The step that matters
Drain the blackberries well. Excess water from washing thins the juices as they cook, so the filling can stay runny and make the bottom crust soggy.
“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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