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Dessert

Swiss Apple Pie

A pie of apples, currants, wine, lemon, and butter, baked in a tart pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Swiss 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 the filling

  1. Boil the apple peels and cores with cloves in water and sugar until sweetened.

  2. Place the apples in a pie dish and mix them with currants.

  3. Add the boiled liquid, red wine, lemon juice, and grated rind over the apples.

  4. Dot the filling with sliced butter.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with light tart pastry.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

  3. Dust with powdered sugar before serving.

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 + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + red winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Apple + red winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together148 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Form the bulk of the filling and soften into a tender, moist layer when baked.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the filling.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the cooking liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness as it melts into the filling.
Lemon juice
Brightens the filling with acidity that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil the apple peels and cores until sweetened. Peels and cores hold much of the apple's pectin and flavour, so simmering them extracts a flavourful liquid that gives the filling body. Too little sugar or cooking can leave it thin or bland, while the apples themselves need to stay intact in the dish.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, clove, sugar, red wine, lemon, butter):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Blackberryfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, clove, sugar, red wine, lemon, butter. 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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