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Dessert

Portuguese Apple Pie

A pie with apples, sugar, lemon rind, apricot jam, custard of milk, eggs, and optional sweetener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Portuguese Apple Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Line a moderate-sized pie dish with the pie crust.

  2. Place the sliced apples in the dish.

  3. Sprinkle sugar and lemon rind over the apples.

  4. Spread apricot jam on top of the apples.

  5. If the apples are not soft, cook them beforehand.

Make the custard and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix milk, beaten eggs, sweetener, and flavoring.

  2. Pour the custard mixture over the apples.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.

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. Apple + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Apricot + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Baking apples
Provide the main body and fruit flavor, softening as the pie bakes.
Eggs
Set the custard so it firms into a sliceable filling as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving it a tender, creamy texture.
Apricot jam
Adds concentrated fruit sweetness and a glossy layer over the apples.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps draw out juices as they bake.

The step that matters

Soften the apples before baking. Firm apples stay hard while the custard sets around them, so they need to be cooked beforehand to become tender in the finished pie.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, apricot, milk, egg. 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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