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Dessert

Apple Pie

A pie with a crust of flour, lard or butter, and a filling of sliced apples, sugar, butter, flour, nutmeg, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,230 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Sift the flour and rub in the lard or butter.

  2. Add cold water and salt, stirring quickly.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the pie crust with the sliced apples.

  2. Mix sugar, butter, flour, and nutmeg together, then sprinkle over the apples.

  3. Add 2-3 tablespoons of water based on apple juiciness.

  4. Pinch the edges of the upper crust closed and bake immediately.

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. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the crust and thickens the filling as it bakes.
Lard
Shortens the dough, keeping it tender and flaky by coating flour strands.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the crust and filling, helping them brown.
Apples
Provide the main filling, with juice that moistens the pie as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the apples caramelise and brown.

The step that matters

Bake immediately after closing the crust. Once the sugar and flour are sprinkled over the sliced apples, they begin drawing out juice. Baking straight away keeps the crust from soaking and helps the filling set rather than running thin.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, walnut, 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

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