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 ↓
Cherry Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the filling
Stone the cherries and save all the juice.
Combine the cherries, sugar, and flour in a bowl; stir until well mixed.
Assemble and bake
Fill a pie plate lined with pastry with the cherry mixture.
Cover with the upper crust and bake.
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
- Cherries
- Form the bulk of the filling and supply the fruit flavor, tartness, and juice.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the cherries while helping draw out their juice.
- Flour
- Thickens the cherry juices so the filling sets when cut rather than running out.
- Pastry for pie crust
- Forms the lower and upper crusts that hold the filling and brown during baking.
The step that matters
Stir the flour evenly into the cherries and sugar. Flour thickens the cherry juice only when it is evenly dispersed. Unmixed pockets of flour stay dry and cause lumps, while uneven thickening leaves a runny or patchy filling.
“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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