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Dessert

Pie Crust and Apple Pie

A pie made with a butter and lard crust filled with sliced tart apples and a sweet glaze of sugar, butter, and citrus or pineapple.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Pie Crust and Apple Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Place the flour on a clean surface and mix in the butter and lard in small flakes.

  2. Moisten the mixture with cold water and form it into a heap.

  3. Dust the heap with flour and roll it out gently.

  4. Fold the dough.

  5. Roll the dough out two or three times.

  6. Set the dough aside.

Line and fill the pie

  1. Take a little more than a fourth of the dough.

  2. Flour the surface of the dough.

  3. Roll the dough to the desired size.

  4. Place the rolled dough in a pie tin.

  5. Trim the edges of the dough with a sharp knife.

  6. Slice the tart apples into eighths or smaller pieces.

  7. Fill the crust with the sliced apples.

  8. Roll out a second crust.

  9. Place the second crust over the apples.

  10. Trim the edges of the second crust.

  11. Lightly press the crusts together.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. While the pie bakes, melt the sugar, a small piece of butter, and orange juice or grated pineapple in a small saucepan.

  3. Once baked, remove the top crust.

  4. Pour the melted mixture over the apples.

  5. Replace the top crust.

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 + appletop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once moistened and rolled.
Butter
Flakes into the dough and adds richness and tenderness to the crust.
Lard
Creates flaky layers in the crust by staying solid in small pieces.
Tart apples
Provide the main filling, with tartness balancing the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it caramelize slightly when melted.

The step that matters

Keeping the fats in small flakes. Fat left in small, cold pieces melts during baking and leaves steam pockets that make the crust flaky. If the fat is worked in too fully or warms up, the crust becomes tough and dense rather than flaky.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, apple. 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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