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Dessert

Apple Pie

Apple pie with stewed apples, orange marmalade, puff pastry, and vanilla-scented syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,371 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stew the apples in a syrup made by dissolving sugar in water until tender, being careful not to break them.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a dish with puff pastry and arrange the apples inside, filling the center of each with orange marmalade.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped citron peel and pour over the syrup, previously reduced with essence of vanilla.

  3. Lay strips of puff pastry over the apples and bake until the pastry is done.

  4. Serve cold with whipped cream.

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. Orange + vanillatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

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

  2. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  3. Apple + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,501 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Apples
Hold their shape as the centerpiece of the pie while softening when stewed.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps the apples stay tender and glossy as they stew.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky crust that bakes golden around the apples.
Orange marmalade
Adds sweetness and a bright, slightly bitter citrus flavor inside each apple.

The step that matters

Stew the apples gently. Apples held at a steady gentle simmer stay tender but intact. Boiling vigorously breaks down their cell walls, so they turn mushy and lose their shape under the pastry.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, vanilla. 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.

More apple pie recipes

Green 20Dried 19English 13Mock 13German 10Lemon 10 See all 369 →

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