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Dessert

Dutch Apple Pie

A pie of sliced apples with currants, lemon, candied peel, and sugar, topped with a light crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Dutch Apple Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Assemble the pie

  1. In a dish, layer part of the sliced apples.

  2. Sprinkle the currants, some sugar, and the grated lemon rind over the apples.

  3. Remove the white part of the lemon, slice the pulp thinly, and spread it on the currants.

  4. Add more sugar and plenty of sliced candied orange and citron peel.

  5. Top with the remaining apples.

  6. Cover with a light pie crust and bake for about 1 hour.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  3. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  5. Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling and moisture that cooks down into the pie.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the filling.
Candied orange peel
Adds sweet, aromatic citrus flavor and chewy texture.
Candied citron peel
Adds sweet, aromatic citrus flavor and chewy texture.
Light pie crust
Encloses the filling and bakes to a golden, structural top layer.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Cranberryfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, lemon, orange. 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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