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Dessert

Lazy Pie

A simple apple pie with a batter crust and meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Lazy 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. Grease a pie pan and cover it with sliced apples.

  3. Sprinkle ⅔ cup sugar, a little butter, and cinnamon over the apples.

Make and bake the pie

  1. In a bowl, mix 1 cup sour milk, ½ teaspoon baking soda, ¼ teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon melted butter, and 1½ cups flour to make the batter.

  2. Pour the batter over the apples in the pie pan.

  3. Bake until golden brown.

  4. Invert the pie onto a plate so the bottom is up.

Top and finish

  1. Top with a meringue made from the beaten egg white and 1 tablespoon sugar.

  2. Brown the meringue in the oven.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Sliced apples
Provide the fruit filling that softens and sweetens as the pie bakes.
Sour milk
Acidity reacts with baking soda to help the batter rise and turn tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter as it bakes.
Egg white
Beaten into a meringue that adds light texture and browns on top.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and meringue and helps the top brown.

The step that matters

Beating the egg white for the meringue. Egg white must be beaten until it holds stiff peaks to form a light foam; any grease or yolk can prevent it from whipping well, leaving a dense topping.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cinnamon, milk, flour, 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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