Skip to main content
Dessert

Sour Cream Pie

A pie made with eggs, sour cream, raisins, sugar, spices, and a pie shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sour Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Beat the eggs until light.

  2. Add the sour cream and raisins to the eggs and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.

  4. Add the dry mixture to the egg mixture and stir until combined.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the uncooked pie shell.

  2. Roll out a portion of the pie dough very thin and cut it into narrow strips.

  3. Lay the strips over the top of the pie in one direction only.

  4. Bake until set and golden.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard-like filling into a firm, sliceable structure as they cook.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, giving the filling a rich, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown at the surface as it bakes.
Flour
Thickens the filling slightly so it holds together when cut.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to add lift and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden. Egg-based fillings firm as proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaked filling stays runny and will not slice cleanly, while overbaking can make it weep or turn rubbery.

“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.

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes