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Dessert

Apple Pie

A fruit pie with stewed apples, sugar, egg whites, whipped cream, nutmeg, and rich pie crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Stew the apples until thoroughly done and dry.

  2. Rub the apples through a colander.

  3. Sweeten with sugar to taste.

Make the filling

  1. When cool, add the egg whites and whipped cream to the apples.

  2. Beat all the ingredients together until well combined.

  3. Flavor with nutmeg.

Fill the pies

  1. Spread the mixture onto baked pie crusts in shallow pie plates.

  2. Pile the filling up three or four deep.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Apples
Provide the bulk and fruity flavor of the filling once stewed and sieved.
Egg whites
Whipped into the filling, they add lightness and help it set as a airy custard-like layer.
Heavy cream
Whipped and folded in, it adds richness and a soft, light texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the stewed apples and balances their tartness.

The step that matters

Stew the apples until thoroughly done and dry. Apples holding excess water will dilute the filling and make it runny, so cooking them down until dry concentrates flavor and keeps the mixture thick enough to pile.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, cream, nutmeg. 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

Green 20Dried 19English 13Mock 13German 10Lemon 10 See all 369 →

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