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Dessert

Turned Over Apple Pie

A pie of sliced apples baked under crust, flipped, topped with hard sauce, nutmeg, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,790 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Turned Over Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Pare and slice the apples into an empty pie plate.

  2. Cover the apples with a pie crust.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake until golden.

  2. Once baked, turn the pie upside down onto a fresh plate.

  3. Smooth the apples with a knife.

  4. Spread a thick layer of hard sauce over the apples.

  5. Sprinkle with nutmeg.

Serve

  1. Serve warm, optionally with butter and sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Apples
Form the bulk of the filling and release juices that give the pie its moisture.
Pie crust
Encloses the apples and browns in the oven, giving the pie its structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and can be served with the pie to add flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust and filling brown.
Nutmeg
Adds warm aroma to the apples.

The step that matters

Turning the baked pie onto a fresh plate. The baked crust is fragile and the apples are soft and juicy, so rough handling can break the crust or make the filling slide apart.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, nutmeg, butter, 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.

More apple pie recipes

Green 20Dried 19English 13Mock 13German 10Lemon 10 See all 369 →

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