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Dessert

Apple Meringue Pie

A pie with apples, butter, cracker crumbs, eggs, cream, lemon essence, and meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apple Meringue Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Steam the apples until soft.

  2. Add the butter while hot.

  3. Let cool.

  4. Once cooled, mix in the cracker crumbs, egg yolks, cream, lemon essence, and sugar.

  5. Pour the mixture into a large pie plate or two small ones with a rich under crust.

Bake and top with meringue

  1. Bake until set.

  2. Beat the egg whites with the sugar until stiff peaks form.

  3. Spread the meringue on top of the baked pie.

  4. Return to the oven and brown the meringue.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Cook down to soft, sweet fruit that forms the body of the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard-like filling as they set during baking.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam that forms the browned meringue topping.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb liquid and help give the filling body and a firm texture.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the filling, softening its set.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the apples, carrying flavor.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites with the sugar until stiff peaks form. Egg whites under-beaten stay runny and will not hold a peak, so the meringue weeps or slides off. Adding sugar gradually while beating stabilizes the foam and gives a glossy, stable topping.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

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