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Dessert

Strawberry Pie

A fruit pie with a lard-based crust and fresh strawberries, topped with sugar and optional whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Strawberry 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.

Make the crust

  1. In a bowl, mix ½ cup lard with 1 pint flour until well combined.

  2. Add ¼ teaspoon salt and enough water to form a dough that is easy to roll.

  3. Place the dough in a pie pan and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

Fill and finish

  1. Crush 2 soda crackers into fine crumbs and sprinkle over the baked crust.

  2. Add small pieces of butter on top of the crumbs.

  3. Place fresh strawberries in the crust and sprinkle with sugar.

  4. Bake in a heated oven for 5 minutes, then cool.

  5. Spread whipped cream over the top if desired.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + sugartop 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

Lard
Creates a tender, flaky texture in the pastry by coating flour particles.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with water.
Soda crackers
Crushed into crumbs to add a light, crisp layer over the baked crust.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the crumb layer as it melts.
Strawberries
Provide the fresh fruit filling and its sweet, bright flavor.

The step that matters

Baking the crust until golden brown. Fully baking the crust before adding the filling keeps it crisp, since a moist filling can soften an underbaked base.

“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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