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Dessert

Shoo-fly Pie

A sweet pie crust topped with crumbs, made from flour, sugar, lard and butter, molasses, boiling water, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Shoo-fly Pie

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

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Scald the baking soda and molasses together.

Make the crust

  1. Combine the flour, sugar, and lard/butter to make a rich pie crust.

  2. Line a pie plate with the crust.

Fill and bake

  1. Add the reserved crumbs to the bottom of the pie plate.

  2. Mix the boiling water with the scalded molasses and baking soda, then pour over the crumbs.

  3. Top with additional crumbs and bake until set.

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).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the crust and the crumbs that hold the filling.
Lard and butter
Fat that makes the crust rich and tender by coating flour particles.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, deep flavor, moisture and dark color to the filling.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and hot water to lighten the wet filling layer.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown lightly while baking.

The step that matters

Pour the molasses mixture evenly over the crumbs. Mixing the molasses, soda and boiling water is the step most likely to go wrong: the soda reacts vigorously with the acidic molasses and hot liquid, so add it carefully and pour it evenly over the crumbs so the wet bottom layer forms properly.

“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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