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Dessert

Sweet Apple Pie

A fruit pie made with apples, butter, sugar, cream, eggs, and lemon, baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweet 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. Grate the apples.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, beat together the melted butter, sugar, cream, eggs, and the juice of the lemon.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  3. Top with strips of pastry.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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, with flavor and moisture as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the filling.
Eggs
Bind the filling and set it as it bakes, giving a custard-like texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the set filling.
Lemon
Its juice adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Eggs set the filling as it heats, and sugar browns the surface. Baking until golden shows the top has browned and the filling has had enough heat to set, while pulling it out too early can leave the filling loose and runny.

Swap the apple

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

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

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