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Dessert

Huckleberry Pie

A fruit pie made with huckleberries, flour, sugar, water, vinegar, and pie crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Huckleberry Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Make a pie crust.

  2. Fill the crust with huckleberries.

  3. Sprinkle the berries with flour and sugar.

  4. Add a little water and 2 tablespoons of vinegar.

  5. Cover with another pie crust.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°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.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  3. Flour + vinegartop 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

Huckleberries
Provide the main fruit filling, supplying flavour and the juice that forms the pie's body.
Flour
Thickens the juices from the berries so the filling sets rather than running out.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the berries.
2 tablespoons vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the fruit flavour.
Pie crusts
Form the pastry shell and top that enclose the filling and brown 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.

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