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Dessert

Elderberry Pie

A fruit pie made with elderberries, vinegar, water, flour, sugar, and optional flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Elderberry Pie

Ingredients

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.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine elderberries, vinegar, water, and sugar.

  3. Add sifted flour to thicken the mixture.

  4. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and add flavoring as desired.

Bake

  1. Bake until the crust is golden and the filling is bubbly.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,652 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

Elderberries
Provide the main fruit flavor and most of the filling's body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the fruit flavor and sharpens sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the berries and vinegar.
Sifted flour
Thickens the juices as its starch swells with heat during baking.

The step that matters

Thickening the filling with flour. Flour starch only thickens when heated with liquid, so the filling must bubble through. Sifting helps the flour blend smoothly without lumps. Underbaked filling stays runny and makes the slice soggy.

“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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