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Dessert

Lemon Apple Pie

A pie made with grated apples, lemon juice and zest, sugar, eggs, butter, and salt, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon 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).

Make the filling

  1. Grate the apples and combine them with the lemon juice and zest.

  2. Add the sugar, water, beaten eggs, butter, and salt to the mixture.

  3. Mix well and pour between two pie crusts.

Bake

  1. Bake until golden brown.

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. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Apple + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,051 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling and its fresh fruit flavor and moisture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set as it bakes.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright aroma that balance the sugar.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the filling.

The step that matters

Mix well and pour between two pie crusts. Grated apples and eggs must be evenly mixed so the filling sets uniformly. Uneven mixing can leave pockets of liquid or raw egg that do not set properly during baking.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, egg, sugar, walnut, 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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