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Dessert

Boiled Cider Pie

A baked pie filled with a mixture of boiled cider, sugar, eggs, flour, water, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Boiled Cider 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 filling

  1. Boil the cider down to 1 cup.

  2. In a bowl, mix the boiled cider, sugar, eggs, flour, cold water, and vanilla.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a prepared pie crust.

  2. Cover with a second pie crust.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) 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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cider + vanillatop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together128 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cider
Reduced by boiling to concentrate its flavor and sweetness into the filling.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the filling structure and body.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it holds together when sliced.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Boil the cider down to 1 cup. Cider contains a lot of water, and reducing it concentrates its flavor and sugars. If it stays thin, the filling will be watery and may not set properly once baked.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, sugar, egg, flour. 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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