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 ↓
Ripe Berry Pies
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Line a pie tin with crust.
Fill it half full with berries.
Assemble and bake
Sprinkle with sifted flour and sugar to sweeten.
Cover with crust, making it quite full.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 40 minutes.
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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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Pie crust
- Forms the shell that holds the filling and bakes into a firm base and top.
- Berries
- Provide the main filling, along with juices that set as the pie bakes.
- Sifted flour
- Thickens the berry juices as they heat, so the filling holds together when sliced.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the berries and balances their natural tartness.
The step that matters
Sprinkle with sifted flour and sugar to sweeten.. Flour thickens the juice that berries release as they heat. Spreading it evenly over the fruit prevents floury pockets and a runny filling.
“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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