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Dessert

Damson or Plum Pie

A pie filled with stewed damsons or plums sweetened with sugar, covered with pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Damson or Plum Pie

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 filling

  1. Stew the damsons or plums in just enough water to prevent burning until tender.

  2. While hot, sweeten the fruit with sugar and let it cool.

Assemble the pie

  1. Pour the cooled fruit into pie dishes lined with pie crust.

  2. Dredge flour over the fruit, then cover with another layer of pie crust.

  3. Wet and pinch the edges of the crust together, then cut a slit in the center for steam to escape.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for twenty minutes.

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 + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Plum + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Damsons or plums
Provide the main fruit flavor and the bulk of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart fruit and helps balance its acidity.
Flour
Dredged over the fruit to help thicken its juices as the pie bakes.

The step that matters

Cutting a steam slit in the top crust. Without a vent, steam from the hot fruit builds pressure under the top crust and can lift or split it. A slit lets steam escape so the crust stays intact.

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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