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Dessert

Date and Apple Pie

A pie filled with dates and apples, sweetened with sugar and water, baked in a double crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Dates and apple work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 119 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Date and Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Stone the dates and chop the apples finely.

  3. In a bowl, combine the dates, chopped apples, sugar, and water.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and cover with the second crust.

  2. Bake until the crust is golden brown.

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. Dates + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Dates + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together985 recipes

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

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

Dates
Provide sweetness and a soft, thick filling as they break down with the water.
Apples
Add tartness and body to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling thicken as it cooks.
Pie crusts
Enclose the filling and brown in the oven for structure and colour.

The step that matters

Bake until the crust is golden brown. Browning depends on the oven heat and the crust surface, not just time. Pulling the pie too early leaves the crust pale and the soft filling underset, while over-baking can dry the crust and let the filling bubble over.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, 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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