Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓
Fresh Cherry Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the filling
Remove the pits from the cherries.
Sweeten the cherries to taste and add a little flour.
Assemble and bake
Line a deep pie dish with the pie crust.
Pour the cherry mixture into the crust.
Cover the pie and bake until the crust is golden.
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 + flourtop 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
- Cherries
- Provide the main fruit filling and its tart, juicy flavor.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cherries and balances their tartness.
- Flour
- Thickens the cherry juices so the filling holds its shape when sliced.
- Pie crust
- Forms the container that holds the filling and browns in the oven.
The step that matters
Adding the flour to the cherries. Flour must be evenly mixed with the cherry juices so it can thicken them during baking. Unevenly distributed flour leaves pockets of runny or pasty 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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