Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Dried Fruit Pies
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 fruit
Wash the dried fruit thoroughly and soak it overnight in water.
In the morning, stew the fruit slowly in the same water until nearly done.
Sweeten the fruit to taste.
Assemble the pie
Roll out the pie crust thinly for both the top and bottom.
Line your pie tin with the bottom crust and fill it half full with the stewed fruit.
Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of sifted flour over the fruit if it is very juicy, then add enough sugar to sweeten.
Fill the crust to the top with the fruit mixture and cover with the top crust.
Bake
Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 40 minutes.
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 + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Dried fruit
- Provides the main filling, with flavour and body once stewed and sweetened.
- Flour
- Thickens the juices released by very juicy fruit so the filling does not run.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the fruit filling and balances its tartness.
- Pie crust
- Encloses the filling and forms the structure of the pie.
The step that matters
Filling the crust with juicy fruit. Very juicy fruit releases liquid as it bakes; without the flour thickener the juices can run out and leave the filling loose and 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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