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Dessert

Apple Stephan

A suet pastry filled with apples, citrus peel, currants, and spices, baked for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Apple Stephan

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix flour and suet, adding water to form a soft dough.

  2. Roll the dough into a sheet 1 inch thick.

Assemble the pie

  1. Grease a shallow pan with hot suet and sprinkle with brown sugar.

  2. Place the dough in the pan and cover with sliced apples, orange peel, lemon peel, currants, and shredded citron.

  3. Sprinkle the filling with brown sugar, cloves, and cinnamon.

  4. Squeeze lemon juice over the filling and add water.

  5. Cover with a thin layer of dough.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 4 hours.

  2. Serve with sauce.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Orange + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the dough's structure, holding the filling inside the pie as it bakes.
Suet
Adds fat that makes the dough rich and tender, and greases the pan.
Apples
Provide moisture and tartness that flavour the filling as it cooks.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chew to the filling.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the filling and browns the top crust and sugared pan base.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, apple, orange, lemon, clove, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Cranberryfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, apple, orange, lemon, clove, cinnamon. 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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