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Dessert

Apple Pie

Apple pie made with sliced apples, powdered sugar, rose water, cloves, egg whites, whipped cream, nutmeg, and butter, baked between two pie crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

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 the bottom crust

  1. Place a pie crust in the bottom of a dish.

  2. Layer sliced apples and powdered sugar alternately until the dish is filled.

  3. Add rose water and cloves.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, stew apples until done and dry, then rub through a colander.

  2. Sweeten with powdered sugar and let cool.

  3. Add egg whites and whipped cream, then mix well.

  4. Spread the mixture onto baked pie crusts.

Bake and finish

  1. Cover with another pie crust and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

  2. Grate nutmeg on top and add bits of butter.

  3. Cover with another crust and bake until golden.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Help bind the filling and give it a light, set structure as it bakes.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a soft, creamy texture to the filling.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps draw out moisture while they cook.
Apples
Provide the main fruit body, flavor, and bulk of the pie.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the top crust brown.

The step that matters

Stewing the apples until dry. Apples that stay wet release moisture into the filling and can make the pie soggy. Cooking them until dry before mixing concentrates their flavor and gives a thicker, more stable filling.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, rose, clove, egg, cream, nutmeg, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, rose, clove, egg, cream, nutmeg, butter. 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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