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Dessert

Pork and Apple Pie

A savory pie with tart apples and fat salt pork, topped with pie crust and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,581 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Pork and Apple Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line a pie tin with pie paste.

  2. Nearly fill it with the peeled and quartered tart apples.

  3. Cover the apples with thin slices of fat salt pork and add pepper.

  4. Put a top crust over the filling.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for one hour.

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 + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Apple + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Pie paste
Forms the crust that holds the filling and browns in the oven.
Tart apples
Supply the bulk of the filling and its tart, fruity flavour as they soften.
Fat salt pork
Renders fat as it bakes, moistening the apples and adding savoury flavour.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper. 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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