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Dessert

Raisin Pie

A pie made with raisins, sugar, lemon juice and rind, and a cracker base, baked between crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Raisin Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the raisins

  1. Wash the raisins and cover them with boiling water.

  2. Let the raisins stand for 10 minutes.

  3. Drain the raisins and remove any stones if necessary.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add the sugar, lemon juice, lemon rind, and finely rolled cracker to the raisins.

  2. Bake the mixture between two pie crusts for 30 to 35 minutes at 450°F.

  3. Reduce the temperature to 400°F.

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. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Raisins
Provide the main filling body and sweetness, softened by soaking in hot water.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds body to the raisin mixture.
Lemon juice and rind
Add acidity and bright citrus aroma that balance the sweetness of the raisins.
Cracker
Crumbs absorb the raisin juices and help thicken the filling as it bakes.

The step that matters

Drain the raisins well. Excess soaking water left in the raisins adds liquid to the filling, which can make it runny and leave the bottom crust soggy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar. 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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