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Cranberry Molasses Pie

A pie filled with a thickened cranberry molasses mixture baked in a rich crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and molasses 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 Molasses Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Combine chopped cranberries, sugar, molasses, and boiling water in a pot. Mix thoroughly.

  2. Cook until thick like raspberry jam.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill a pie plate lined with rich crust with the cooled mixture.

  2. Top with narrow strips of crust and bake until golden.

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. Sugar + molassestop 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

Cranberries
Provide the tart fruit base that cooks down into the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps set the filling as it thickens.
Molasses
Adds deep, slightly bitter sweetness and a dark color to the filling.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cooked filling so it holds its shape when cooled and sliced.

The step that matters

Cook until thick like raspberry jam. Cornstarch thickens only when it is heated enough to swell and gel the liquid. Stopping early leaves a runny filling that will not set after cooling.

“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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