Why it works: Milk and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓
An Open 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 pastry
Place one layer of pastry in a pie plate and create a rim around the edge.
Cut ornaments from the remaining pastry in shapes like rings or diamonds and place them on the layer.
Brush the pastry with a little milk.
Bake
Bake the pie at 400°F (200°C) for twenty minutes.
Once out of the oven, carefully lift the ornaments with a knife while the pastry is hot.
Stew and assemble
Stew the quartered apples gently to avoid breaking them.
Place the stewed apples on the pie and arrange the ornaments on top.
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.
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Milk + appletop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,104 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Pastry
- Forms the base, rim and ornaments, and bakes into a crisp, sturdy structure.
- Milk
- Brushed on the pastry, it helps the surface brown during baking.
- Apples
- Form the filling, softening as they stew and adding moisture and fruit flavour.
The step that matters
Lifting the ornaments while the pastry is hot. Hot pastry is soft and pliable, so the knife can lift the ornaments cleanly. As the pastry cools, it firms and sets, and the ornaments can stick to the layer or crack.
“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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