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Dessert

Shaker Apple Pie

A pie made with sliced sour apples, raisins, sugar, nutmeg, and butter, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Shaker Apple Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the apples in a pie crust and add the raisins.

  2. Cover with the upper crust, ensuring it doesn't stick to the lower crust.

  3. Bake for about 40 minutes until the apples are cooked and the crust is browned.

Finish the filling

  1. Remove the top crust and set it aside.

  2. Stir the apples with a knife, removing any hard pieces.

  3. Add sugar, nutmeg, and butter, then replace the top crust.

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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sour apples
Provide the main filling, and their tartness balances the sweetness added to the pie.
Seeded raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy moisture to the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and helps the filling feel smooth.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, nutmeg, butter. 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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