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Dessert

Fresh Blackberry Pie

A fruit pie made with fresh blackberries, sugar, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Fresh Blackberry Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

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

  2. Line a pie pan with a flaky pie crust, ensuring the bottom is floured.

Fill and cover

  1. Mix the blackberries, sugar, and flour together.

  2. Place the mixture in the lined pan and dot with butter on top.

  3. Cover the pie with a full crust or create a lattice with strips of pastry.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 300°F (150°C) and continue baking until done.

  2. Serve with a generous spoonful of whipped cream on each piece.

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. Flour + sugartop 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).

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

Blackberries
Provide the main fruit filling, giving the pie its flavour and juicy body.
Flour
Thickens the fruit juices so the filling sets rather than running out.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the blackberries.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the top of the filling as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until done after reducing the heat. Blackberries release a lot of juice as they heat. The filling needs enough time at the lower temperature for the flour to thicken those juices, otherwise the pie can be runny when cut.

“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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