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Dessert

Strawberry Pie

A pie with a rich pastry crust filled with strawberries and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Strawberry Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the shell

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line a deep pie plate with rich pastry.

  3. Bake the lined pie plate until golden brown.

Make the filling

  1. Prepare enough strawberries to fill the shell.

  2. When the crust is nearly baked, mix the strawberries with ½ cup sugar.

  3. Make a meringue by beating the egg whites with 2 tablespoons fine sugar until stiff.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill the baked shell with strawberries.

  2. Spread the meringue over the top.

  3. Bake until the meringue is slightly 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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Strawberries
Provide the fruit filling and its fresh flavour and colour.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam that forms the meringue topping and sets when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the strawberries and helps the egg white foam hold its structure.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped to a stable foam with sugar added so the meringue holds its shape and bakes into a light, set topping rather than weeping or collapsing.

“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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