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Dessert

Banbury Apple Pie

A fruit pie with apples, ginger, candied orange peel, currants, cinnamon, sugar, and butter, topped with pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Banbury 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter a deep pie dish.

  3. Peel and core the apples.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer some apples in the bottom of the dish with a thick layer of candied orange peel, currants, and spices.

  2. Drizzle a little melted butter over the layer.

  3. Add more layers of apples, candied peel, currants, and spices.

  4. Pour the boiling water and sugar over the entire dish.

  5. Cover with pastry and bake for about 45 minutes.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Juicy apples
Form the bulk of the filling and soften into a tender, moist layer as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavour to the filling and dish.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps form a syrup with the boiling water.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness among the apple layers.
Candied orange peel
Contributes sweet citrus flavour and a chewy, aromatic bite.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling water and sugar over the entire dish. Boiling water dissolves the sugar and spreads it through the layers, creating the syrup that keeps the apples moist. Adding it cold or unevenly can leave the sugar gritty and the filling dry.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, ginger, orange, butter, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, ginger, orange, butter, cinnamon, sugar. 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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