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Dessert

Molasses Pie

A sweet pie made with molasses, butter, and spices, encased in a layered dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Molasses Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour and cut in the butter and lard until crumbly.

  2. Add the cold water and mix to form a dough.

  3. Roll out the dough into a sheet and spread half of the lard over it. Sprinkle with flour, fold, and roll out again.

  4. Spread the remaining lard, dredge with flour, fold again, and divide into two sheets.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie dish with one sheet and fill with molasses mixed with butter and spices.

  2. Cover with the second sheet, crimp the edges, and bake until pale brown.

Serve

  1. Serve fresh, but not hot.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten structure that holds the layered dough together.
Butter
Adds richness and flakiness as it stays solid in the layers during baking.
Lard
Creates flaky layers by coating the dough, keeping strands of dough separate when baked.
West india molasses
Provides dark sweetness and a deep flavor that defines the filling.

The step that matters

Layering the lard and flour into the dough. Folding fat and flour into the dough repeatedly creates separate layers. If the fat softens or melts into the dough, the layers blend and the crust turns dense instead of flaky.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, molasses, ginger, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, molasses, ginger, cinnamon. 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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