Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Open Apple Pie
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the crust
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, mix the flour and cottolene until crumbly.
Add enough water to form a dough.
Roll out the dough and line a deep pie tin.
Assemble and bake
Pare and quarter the apples, placing them rounded side down in the crust.
In a separate bowl, combine sugar, butter, flour, and hot water to make a paste.
Fill in around the apples with the paste.
Bake until the crust is light brown.
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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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,706 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the structure of the crust and thickens the paste around the apples.
- Cottolene
- Shortening that coats flour particles, keeping the crust tender and flaky.
- Apples
- Provide the fruit filling, becoming tender and moist as they bake.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown lightly.
- Butter
- Adds richness and aroma to the paste around the apples.
The step that matters
Bake until the crust is light brown. Baking long enough sets the starch in the flour-based paste and cooks the shortening into the crust, while stopping at light brown avoids over-browning and drying.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, butter):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, 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.
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