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Dessert

Mock Apple Pie

A pie made with a Boston cracker crust, lemon, sugar, and puff pastry, without apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mock Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Crush the Boston cracker finely with a rolling pin.

  2. In a bowl, combine the crushed cracker with cold water.

  3. Add sugar, lemon juice and pulp, grated lemon rind, and nutmeg to the bowl.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie plate with half of the puff pastry.

  2. Pour the mixture into the lined pie plate.

  3. Cover with the remaining puff pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Boston cracker
Crushed and soaked, it forms the bulk and body that stands in for apples.
Fine white sugar
Provides sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice and pulp
Adds acidity and bright flavour that mimics the tartness of apples.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp crust that browns in the oven around the filling.

The step that matters

Soaking the cracker in cold water. The crushed cracker must be fully softened and evenly moistened before baking, so the filling sets into a uniform texture rather than staying dry or gritty in patches.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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