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Dessert

Dried Apple Pie

A pie made with dried apples, egg yolks, sugar, and a crust, finished with a frosted topping of beaten egg whites and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Dried Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Cook the dried apples until very soft.

  2. Mash the apples until smooth.

  3. Beat in the yolks of 2 eggs.

  4. Sweeten and season to taste.

Bake and frost

  1. Bake in a pie crust.

  2. Frost with beaten egg whites and 2 tablespoons of sugar.

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

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

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

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

  3. Apple + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,461 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Dried apples
Provide the bulk and main flavor of the filling once cooked and mashed.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the frosting whip and brown.
Pie crust
Holds the filling in shape while it bakes.

The step that matters

Frost with beaten egg whites and sugar. Egg whites whipped with sugar form a stable foam. If they are under-beaten, the frosting can weep or slide off, and it needs to be stiff enough to hold its shape while it browns.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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