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Dessert

Lemon Apple Pie

A fruit pie with lemon juice, zest, apples, eggs, and sugar in a rich crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lemon Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Squeeze the juice of the lemons and grate the rind of 1½ lemons.

  2. Chop the apples finely and place them in a pan.

  3. Add the lemon juice and grated rind to the apples, then stir in 2 cups of sugar.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs with ⅓ cup of sugar until very light.

  5. Combine the egg mixture with the apple and lemon mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare a rich pie crust and fill it with the mixture.

  2. Cover with a top crust and bake.

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. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling and tart, fruity body once cooked.
Lemons
Supply acidity and aroma from the juice and grated rind, brightening the sweetness.
Eggs
Beaten with sugar, they thicken and enrich the filling as they set during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the acidity of the lemon.

The step that matters

Combine the egg mixture with the apple and lemon mixture. Beating the eggs until very light traps air and helps them blend evenly into the filling. Eggs set when heated, so the mixture needs to be well combined before it goes into the crust to bake evenly.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, egg, sugar. 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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