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Dessert

Dried Apple Pie

A pie made with stewed apples, lemon, sugar, eggs, milk, and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Dried 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.

Make the filling

  1. Pass the stewed apples through a colander.

  2. If the apples are not tart, add the lemon juice and grated rind.

  3. Sweeten to taste.

  4. Add the egg yolks and sweet milk to the apple mixture.

Bake and top

  1. Bake with one crust at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Once the pastry is done, make a meringue with the egg whites and powdered sugar.

  3. Spread the meringue on top of the pie.

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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

Stewed apples
Form the bulk of the filling and provide the pie's fruit flavor and moisture.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the filling as they set during baking.
Sweet milk
Adds liquid and richness, softening the apple filling and helping it set.
Egg whites
Whipped with powdered sugar to form a light, stable meringue topping.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the egg whites, sweetening and stabilizing the meringue.

The step that matters

Make the meringue after the pastry is done. Meringue is best spread over a hot filling while the pie is still warm, but it must be baked gently so it sets without weeping or browning too fast. Egg whites whipped with sugar hold their foam best when the bowl and whites are free of any yolk or grease.

Swap the apple

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

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

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