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Dessert

Fruit Pie

A fruit pie with sour apples, raisins, sugar, butter, and spices baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fruit Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Mix flour and salt. Cut in butter until crumbly.

  3. Add ice water until dough forms.

  4. Roll out the dough.

Fill and bake

  1. Line a two-quart tin basin, leaving the sides bare.

  2. Layer chopped sour apples in the bottom. Add a layer of chopped raisins.

  3. Sprinkle sugar, pieces of butter, and spices over the layers.

  4. Repeat layering until the dish is full.

  5. Finish with a crust on top.

  6. Bake for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Turn the pie upside down onto a plate.

  2. Sprinkle with water and fine sugar before serving.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough once hydrated and rolled.
Unsalted butter
Creates flaky layers in the crust as it melts and steams during baking.
Sour apples
Provide the main fruit filling and tartness that balances the sugar.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it thicken into a syrup as it cooks.

The step that matters

Adding ice water to the dough. Too much water or warm dough makes the crust tough, because wet flour develops gluten. Cold, just-moistened dough keeps butter in solid pieces that create flakiness.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, raisin, sugar, clove, 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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