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Dessert

Pippin Pie

A baked apple pie made with grated pippin apples, sugar, butter, eggs, lemon, nutmeg, and a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pippin 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).

Make the filling

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg yolks, lemon peel, lemon juice, nutmeg, and grated apples.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites until just combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and top with crossbars of the same crust.

  2. Bake until the pie is set and 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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 + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich the filling and whites, folded in, lighten its texture and help it set.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and a tender texture to the filling.
White sugar
Creamed with butter, it sweetens the filling and helps give it a light, fluffy structure.
Pippin apples
Grated into the filling, they add moisture, body and tart apple flavor.
Lemon
Its peel and juice add aroma and acidity that brighten the sweet filling.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air that gives lift, so they should be folded gently and only until just combined. Overmixing knocks out the air and leaves a denser pie.

Swap the apple

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

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

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