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Dessert

Apricot Pie

A fruit pie with apricots, sugar, cinnamon, and a buttery crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Apricot 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.

Make the pastry

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, butter, salt, and sugar.

  2. Make a well in the center and add egg yolks.

  3. Gradually mix in cold water with a little lemon juice to form a soft paste.

Assemble the pie

  1. Roll out half of the paste and line a pie plate.

  2. Fill the plate two-thirds full with halved and pitted apricots.

  3. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon if desired.

  4. Wet the edges of the bottom crust, cover with the top crust, and press edges together.

  5. Prick the top with a fork, then brush with beaten egg diluted with milk or water.

Bake

  1. Sprinkle with sugar and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 to 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 + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Apricot + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together618 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the pastry dough.
Butter or dripping
Adds fat that makes the pastry tender and flaky.
Egg yolks
Enrich the dough and add richness and colour.
Apricots
Provide the fruit filling and its sweet-tart flavour.
Beaten egg
Gives the top crust a glossy, browned finish when baked.

The step that matters

Pressing the top and bottom crust edges together. If the edges are not wet and pressed firmly, they can separate during baking and let juices leak out, so the filling may run and the seal may fail.

“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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