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Dessert

Fbexch Apple Pie

A sliced apple pie with a cake-style batter poured over the apples and a meringue topping browned in the oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fbexch Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Butter a pie tin and fill it with sliced apples.

  2. Add sugar and sprinkle nutmeg over the apples.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter, then add sugar and beaten egg yolks.

  2. Mix in flour and baking powder, sifted together, alternately with milk.

  3. Pour the mixture over the apples and bake until the apples are soft.

Topping and finish

  1. Turn the pie onto a plate with apples on top.

  2. Cover with meringue made from 2 egg whites.

  3. Brown the meringue in the oven.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the batter and help bind it, while whites whip into the meringue topping.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping it rise and become lighter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, tenderizing the batter and carrying flavor.
Apples
Soften during baking and form the fruit filling beneath the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and filling and helps the meringue stay glossy and stable.

The step that matters

Browning the meringue. Meringue made from egg whites can weep or collapse if under-whipped or over-baked. Watch it closely so it browns lightly while the sugar caramelizes and the foam sets.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, nutmeg, butter, flour, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, nutmeg, butter, flour, milk. 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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