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Dessert

Raisin Pie

A sweet filling of raisins cooked in water, thickened with flour and sugar, flavored with nutmeg, used in a double crust pie.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Raisin Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Rinse the raisins, removing stems and seeds.

  2. Cook the raisins in boiling water until tender.

  3. Measure the liquid; if it is less than 1½ cups, add more boiling water.

  4. Thicken the liquid with flour mixed with sugar and add nutmeg.

Assemble the pie

  1. Cool the mixture and use it as a filling for a double crust pie.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Provide the main filling body and sweetness as they soften and release their sugars.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a filling that holds its shape when sliced.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the raisin liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken the liquid with flour mixed with sugar. Mixing flour with sugar before adding it helps keep the flour from clumping. Thickening happens as starch absorbs liquid and swells when heated, so the filling needs enough heat to thicken fully before cooling.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Turmericfits less well

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