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Dessert

Apricot Pie

A pastry pie filled with apricots, powdered sugar, butter, and glazed with egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,458 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apricot 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. Cut apricots in half and remove the stones.

  2. Place apricots in a dish lined with puff pastry.

Assemble

  1. Add powdered sugar and lukewarm butter to the apricots.

  2. Cover with the upper crust.

Glaze and bake

  1. Glaze with egg white and sprinkle with sifted sugar.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) 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. Apricot + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,458 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apricots
Provide the main fruit filling, supplying tartness and fruity aroma.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the filling and dissolves easily into the fruit juices.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the crust brown.
Egg white
Forms a glaze that sets and browns the top crust for a glossy finish.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky crust that bakes into layers around the fruit.

The step that matters

Glaze with egg white and sprinkle with sifted sugar. A thin, even egg white glaze helps the sugar caramelise and brown the top evenly. Too much glaze can pool and make the crust soggy or sticky in patches.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, 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.

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