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Dessert

Green Apple Pie

A pie made with tart apples, water, white sugar, nutmeg, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,790 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Pare, quarter, core, and stew the tart apples in enough water to prevent burning.

  2. When tender, sweeten the apples very sweetly with white sugar.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill a pie plate lined and edged with puff pastry with the apple mixture.

  2. Grate a little nutmeg over the filling, cover the pie, and bake for 45 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Tart apples
Provide the main filling, softening into a tender, tart base when stewed.
White sugar
Sweetens the stewed apples, balancing the tartness of the fruit.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky crust that lines and encloses the apple filling.

The step that matters

Stewing the apples until tender. Apples must be cooked through before filling the pie, because raw apples stay firm and won't soften fully during baking. Sweetening after they are tender lets the sugar season them evenly without the pieces breaking down too early.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, 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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