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Dessert

Apple Sauce Pie

A pie filled with a sweet apple sauce mixture thickened with corn starch and folded with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Apple Sauce Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine apple sauce, sugar, corn starch, salt, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and add them to the mixture.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the filling into pie crusts and bake for 10 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. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Apple + corntop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together330 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the filling, while whipped whites add lightness and loft.
Apple sauce
Provides the bulk, moisture and apple flavor of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Corn starch
Thickens the filling as it heats so it sets rather than runs.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that gives the filling its lift. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring vigorously deflates the foam and leaves a dense, flat pie.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, sugar, corn, lemon, egg):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, sugar, corn, lemon, 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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