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 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
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
In a bowl, combine currants, sugar, egg yolks, flour, and water. Mix well.
Pour the mixture into an open pie crust.
Frost and bake
Beat the egg white until frothy and spread it over the pie as frosting.
Bake in the preheated oven until set and golden brown.
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).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Currant + eggtop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,734 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Currant + flourtop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Currants
- Provide the fruit filling and its tart flavor and moisture.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the currants.
- Egg yolks
- Help the filling thicken and set as it bakes.
- Flour
- Thickens the filling so it holds its shape when cut.
- Egg white
- Beaten and spread on top, it forms a light frosting that browns in the oven.
The step that matters
Bake until set and golden brown. Egg yolks set as they heat, and flour thickens the juices. Pulling the pie too early leaves a runny filling, while overbaking can make the frosting dry and the filling tough.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, flour):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Lemonfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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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