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Dessert

Mock Cherry Pie

A fruit pie made with cranberries, raisins, sugar, flour, butter, lemon juice, salt, baking soda, and water, baked in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mock Cherry Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Combine cranberries, raisins, and 1 cup water in a pot and simmer until tender.

  2. Remove from heat and add enough water to bring the total to 2 cups.

  3. Mix sugar and flour together, then add to the fruit mixture. Return to heat and boil for 1 minute.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in butter, lemon juice, baking soda, and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie pan with pastry, sprinkle flour on the bottom, and pour in the fruit mixture.

  2. Cover with a top layer of pastry and bake.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Cranberries
Provide the tart flavour and red colour that give the pie its cherry-like character.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, with the cooked fruit, helps form a glossy, thick texture.
Flour
Thickens the fruit juices into a set, sliceable filling.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the filling.

The step that matters

Thicken the filling by boiling after adding the sugar and flour. Flour only thickens when it is heated long enough in liquid. Boiling for the full minute lets the starch swell and set, so the pie slices cleanly instead of running when baked.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, flour, butter. 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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