Skip to main content
Dessert

Raisin Pie

A sweet pie with raisins, sugar, lemon, and cracker filling baked in two crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 filling

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

  2. Let them stand for 10 minutes.

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

  4. In a bowl, combine the drained raisins, sugar, lemon juice, lemon rind, and finely rolled cracker.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the filling between two pie crusts.

  2. Bake at 450°F (230°C) for 10 minutes.

  3. Reduce the temperature to 400°F (200°C) and bake for an additional 20 to 25 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. 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, adding chewy texture and concentrated sweetness as they soften.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps draw moisture out of the raisins into a syrup.
Lemon
Juice adds acidity to balance sweetness, and rind adds bright aroma.
Cracker
Crumbs absorb liquid from the raisins and sugar, helping thicken the filling.

The step that matters

Draining the raisins. Soaked raisins hold extra water; if not drained well, the excess liquid can make the filling runny and soggy the bottom crust.

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.

More raisin pie recipes

Lemon 28Apple 17Cranberry 7Molasses 6Sour Cream 4 See all 104 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes