Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Cherry 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.
Assemble
Line a pie tin with the pastry.
Fill the tin with pitted cherries.
Sprinkle sugar on top.
Place cross bars of pastry over the cherries.
Bake
Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the crust is golden.
Beat the egg.
Pour the beaten egg over the pie.
Return the pie to the oven until the egg absorbs the juice.
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.
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Pastry
- Forms the crust that holds the filling and browns in the oven.
- Pitted cherries
- Provide the fruit filling and the juice that the egg helps absorb.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the filling and draws out the cherries' juice.
- Egg
- Sets in the oven to bind the cherry juice and firm the filling.
The step that matters
Returning the egg to the oven. The beaten egg needs sustained heat to set. Too little baking leaves the juicy filling runny and wet, while too much baking can dry the egg and overcook the crust.
“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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