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Dessert

Pie Plant Pie

A double-crust pie filled with diced pie plant, sugar, flour, butter, and orange juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pie Plant Pie

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 the filling

  1. Wash the pie plant and cut it into small pieces without peeling.

  2. Mix the sugar and flour together.

Assemble the pie

  1. Spread half of the sugar mixture on the bottom crust of the pastry.

  2. Add the diced pie plant on top, then pour the remaining sugar mixture over it.

  3. Dot the filling with butter and add orange juice to taste.

  4. Cover with the upper crust and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 40 to 45 minutes.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Flour + orangetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,821 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pie plant
Provides the tart flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and draws moisture out of the pie plant as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the juices released by the pie plant so the filling sets rather than running.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Covering and baking the pie. Pie plant releases a lot of juice as it cooks. Because the flour is only a light thickener, the filling needs the full baking time so the juices thicken and the bottom crust can set.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter. 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.

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