Skip to main content
Dessert

Syrup Pie

A pie made with syrup, eggs, butter, sugar, lemon extract, and pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Syrup Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the syrup until it ropes.

  2. In a bowl, mix the cooked syrup, eggs, butter, sugar, and lemon extract until well combined.

  3. Line pie pans with pastry.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the lined pans.

  2. Bake until the pie is browned.

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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Syrup
Forms the sweet, thick body of the filling once cooked.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set firmly as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth texture to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown during baking.

The step that matters

Cook the syrup until it ropes. Cooking the syrup thickens it by driving off water and concentrating its sugars. If it is undercooked, the filling may stay runny and fail to set properly after baking.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, egg, butter, sugar, lemon):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, egg, butter, sugar, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes