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Dessert

Mock Lemon Pie

A pie made with sliced apples, lemon juice and rind, sugar, egg, butter, flour, Crisco, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Mock Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Fill the pie

  1. Slice the apples.

  2. Beat the egg well and pour it over the apples.

  3. Sprinkle the sugar on top.

  4. Melt the butter and pour it over the mixture.

Make the crust

  1. Cut the Crisco into the sifted flour with the salt.

  2. Make a top and bottom crust.

Bake

  1. Bake the pie at the same time as the chicken.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  3. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Apples
Supply the filling's bulk, moisture and tartness.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma that cut the sweetness.
Egg
Binds the apple filling so it sets as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the apples brown.
Flour
Gives the crust its structure once mixed with water.
Crisco
Shortening that keeps the crust tender and flaky.

The step that matters

Cut the Crisco into the flour. Leaving the fat in small, distinct pieces creates layers that make the crust flaky. Overworking the dough develops gluten, which makes the crust tough.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

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