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 ↓
Mock Cherry Tart
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.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Make the filling
In a bowl, combine cranberries, sugar, and water.
Mix the flour with a little water to create a paste. Add the paste to the cranberry mixture and stir everything together.
Bake
Pour the mixture into a pie crust.
Bake until the filling is bubbly and the crust is golden.
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
- Cranberries
- Provide the tart flavour and bulk of the filling, releasing juice as they cook.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the cranberries.
- Flour
- Thickens the cranberry juices so the filling sets rather than running.
The step that matters
Stirring the flour paste into the cranberry mixture. Flour must be fully dispersed in the liquid, or it clumps and leaves pockets of raw starch. Mixing it into a smooth paste first helps it thicken the filling evenly.
“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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