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Dessert

Sweet Apple Pie

A baked apple pie with sweet apples, sugar, butter, eggs, lemon juice, currants, and spice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Sweet Apple 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. Grate the apples.

  2. Mix the grated apples with sugar, melted butter, eggs, lemon juice, currants, and spice.

  3. Line a pie plate with the crust and fill it with the apple mixture.

  4. If desired, add 1 or 2 teaspoons of brandy to the filling before baking.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) without an upper crust until set.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  3. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apple + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

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

Sweet apples
Provide the bulk of the filling and its fruity flavour and moisture.
Eggs
Set the filling into a sliceable custard-like texture as they bake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the apples and lemon.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender filling.
Pie crust
Forms the base that holds the filling while it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves the filling runny and it may not slice cleanly, while overbaking can make it grainy or weep.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, butter, egg, lemon, cinnamon, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, butter, egg, lemon, cinnamon, 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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