Name: Dried Apple Pie
Ingredients: dried apples; sugar or molasses; ¼ teaspoon salt; pie crust

Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Dried Apple Pie

Ingredients

dried apples
sugar or molasses
¼ teaspoon salt
pie crust

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

Stew the dried apples until soft, then mash them finely.
Add sugar or molasses to sweeten and a sprinkle of salt.

Bake and serve

Fill a pie crust with the apple mixture.
Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for half an hour.

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.

Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Dried apples: Provide the main filling, softened by stewing and mashed into a thick, sweet base.
Sugar or molasses: Sweetens the filling and adds flavor to the apples.
Pie crust: Holds the apple filling in a shell while it bakes.

“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.