Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Pie with Raisins

A lemon pie filled with raisins, molasses, and a thickened lemon mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pie with Raisins

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Roll the lemons until soft, then juice them and remove the seeds.

  2. Chop the lemon peel very finely.

  3. Seed and chop the raisins.

  4. Mix the lemon juice, chopped peel, raisins, and molasses together.

  5. Add a little flour and water to thicken the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the filling into two pie crusts.

  2. Bake until set, avoiding rushing the baking process.

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 + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide the juice and peel that give the filling its sharp, acidic flavour.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the filling.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and a rich, caramel-like flavour.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it sets rather than running out when cut.

The step that matters

Bake until set, without rushing. Flour thickens the filling only as it heats fully, and a rushed bake leaves the centre runny. Baking slowly until the filling firms lets the starch swell and set properly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, molasses, 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipes