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Dessert

A Very Nice Apple Pie, or Tart

A pie of halved apples cooked with sugar, lemon, mace, water, and wine, topped with puff pastry and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,207 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

A Very Nice Apple Pie, or Tart

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the apples

  1. Combine sugar, lemon, mace, and water in a saucepan.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Carefully add the apples and simmer until tender.

  4. Remove apples and place on a dish, keeping them whole.

  5. Boil the liquid until only enough juice remains for the pies.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line pie plates with crust and arrange the apples inside.

  2. Add wine to the juice, pour it over the apples, and brush the crust with egg white.

  3. Sprinkle fine sugar over the top and bake until the crust is golden.

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 + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Apple + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together865 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Greening apples
Provide the fruit filling that softens while poaching and holds its shape in the pie.
White sugar
Sweetens the poaching syrup and, once reduced, the juice poured over the apples.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky crust that bakes golden around the apples.
Egg white
Brushed on the crust to help it brown and give a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Boil the liquid until only enough juice remains for the pies. Reducing the syrup concentrates its sugar and flavour; if it stays too thin, it will make the filling watery and soak the pastry.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, lemon, wine, egg. 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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