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Dessert

A Good Apple Pie

A pie made with thinly sliced tart apples, sugar, butter, citron, nutmeg, lemon juice, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A Good Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Slice tart apples very thinly.

  2. Place apples in a porcelain-lined saucepan with ½ cup water.

  3. Cover and steam until just tender, keeping their shape.

Assemble the pie

  1. Pour apples into pie plates lined with puff paste.

  2. Sift plenty of sugar over the apples.

  3. Dot with butter and add thinly sliced citron.

  4. Sprinkle with nutmeg and lemon juice if needed.

  5. Cover with puff paste and bake until golden.

  6. Serve with cream for extra deliciousness.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Tart apples
Provide the main filling, softening into tender slices while holding their shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the apples.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the filling.
Puff paste
Forms the flaky crust that encloses and browns over the filling.

The step that matters

Steam the apples until just tender. Cooking the apples only until tender keeps their shape and prevents a mushy filling. Overcooking before baking breaks down the pectin and leaves the pie watery.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, nutmeg, lemon. 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

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