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Dessert

Currant Jelly Pie

A pastry shell filled with a thickened currant jelly mixture topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Currant Jelly Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil currant jelly and ½ cup water until dissolved.

  2. Beat together egg yolks, sugar, and flour moistened with ¼ cup water.

  3. Add the beaten mixture to the dissolved jelly.

  4. Boil the mixture until thickened.

  5. Fill the baked pastry shell with the thickened jelly mixture.

Top and brown

  1. Whip the egg whites.

  2. Sweeten the whipped egg whites with 2 tablespoons sugar.

  3. Heap the sweetened egg whites on top of the pie.

  4. Sprinkle the topping with sugar to crisp it.

  5. Brown the topping in the oven.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Currant + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Currant + flourtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Currant jelly
Dissolves into the liquid to provide the pie's fruity flavor and sweetness.
Egg yolks
Thicken the jelly filling as they cook, giving it a smooth, set body.
Flour
Stabilizes the custard-like filling, helping it thicken without breaking.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the light topping, which browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, sprinkled on the topping, helps it crisp and brown.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until thickened. Egg yolks and flour must be cooked enough to thicken the filling, but boiling too long or too hard can curdle the yolks or make the filling stiff and grainy.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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