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Dessert

Fruit Pie

A fruit pie with apples, apricots, prunes, pears, raisins, raspberries, and a wine‑brandy syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 649 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. 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.

Prepare the pie

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

  2. Line a buttered pie dish with a layer of pie crust. Create a border with 3 to 4 layers of pie crust.

Fill and bake

  1. Arrange the prepared fruits on the crust: apples, apricots, prunes, pears, raisins, and raspberries.

  2. In a saucepan, boil the wine and sugar for 5 minutes. Add the brandy and pour the mixture over the arranged fruits.

  3. Bake the pie in the oven until golden.

Serve

  1. Serve warm, drizzled with the syrup.

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 + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Apricot + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Apricot + brandytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide firm fruit that holds its shape and adds tartness during baking.
Pears
Add soft, sweet fruit that bakes tender and perfumes the pie.
Sugar
Sweetens the wine syrup and helps it thicken and caramelize slightly as it reduces.
Wine
Forms the syrup base that moistens the fruit and carries flavour through the pie.
Brandy
Adds aroma and depth to the syrup poured over the fruit.
Pie crust
Gives structure to the pie and browns in the oven to form the golden finish.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup over the fruit. Boiling the wine and sugar first concentrates the syrup and drives off alcohol before the brandy is added. Pouring it over the fruit before baking lets it soak in and keep the fruit moist.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, apricot, pear, wine, sugar, brandy):

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, apricot, pear, wine, sugar, brandy. 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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