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 ↓
Creamed Sweet Apple Pie
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the apples
Pare, core, and quarter the apples.
Place the apples in a pudding dish with a few spoonfuls of water to prevent burning.
Cover the dish.
Cook until tender but not broken.
Add 2 tablespoons of sugar for each cup of apples and let them cool in the syrup.
Cut the apples into thin slices or tiny dice.
Make and bake the pie
Roll out the puff pastry thinly.
Line a pie plate with the pastry, sprinkling with flour.
Cover with another crust.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) until brown.
Assemble and serve
When ready to serve, open the crusts, spread the lower one with the stewed apples.
Cover with whipped cream.
Place the top crust on.
Sprinkle the top crust with powdered sugar.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,481 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
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Apple + flourtop 22% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,140 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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
- Sweet apples
- Provide the main filling, softening when cooked and sweetened by the sugar syrup.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the apples and forms a syrup that flavours the cooked fruit.
- Puff pastry
- Forms the flaky crust that bakes golden and crisp around the filling.
- Whipped cream
- Adds a soft, rich layer that moistens and mellows the filling.
- Flour
- Dusted on the pastry to help keep the crust from sticking during assembly.
The step that matters
Cooking the apples until tender but not broken. Apples cooked too long collapse into mush, while undercooked ones stay hard. Stopping at tender keeps distinct slices that hold their shape in the pie.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, cream):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Strawberryfits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, cream. 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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