Name: Cranberry Pie
Ingredients: 2 pounds cranberries; 1 pound sugar; Butter, for topping; Pie crust, for lining and covering

Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cranberry Pie

Ingredients

2 pounds cranberries
1 pound sugar
Butter, for topping
Pie crust, for lining and covering

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

Stew the cranberries with sugar until soft.

Assemble and bake

Pour the mixture into pie plates lined with pie crust.
Dot the filling with small pieces of butter.
Cover with strips of pie crust.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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.

Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cranberries: Provide the tart fruit base that becomes the pie filling when stewed until soft.
Sugar: Sweetens the tart cranberries and helps soften them into a thick filling.
Butter: Adds richness and fat to the top of the filling, aiding browning in the oven.

“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.