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Dessert

Florence Pie

A baked apple pie with a buttery batter topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Florence 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).

  2. Nearly fill a deep pie plate with sliced apples.

  3. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  4. Rub in the butter and mix with milk to make a thick batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Spread the batter over the apples and bake until the fruit is done.

  2. Invert a plate upon the pie and turn it over.

  3. Spread with butter, sprinkle with sugar and nutmeg, and serve hot with cream.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the thick batter that holds the pie together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the batter rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the batter and browns the top when spread on at the end.
Sliced apples
Provide the fruit base and moisture that cooks down beneath the batter.

The step that matters

Bake until the fruit is done. The batter sets while the apples soften. Underbaked apples stay firm and watery, while the batter needs enough heat to set fully into a cooked crust.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, sugar, nutmeg, cream. 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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