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Dessert

Dried Apple Pie

A pie made from stewed dried apples, sugar, citrus peel, spices, and egg, baked in a double crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. 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.

Prepare the filling

  1. Stew the dried apples in ½ cup of water until very soft.

  2. Mash the stewed apples through a colander.

  3. Add sugar, dried citrus peel, and a pinch of spice to the mashed apples.

  4. Stir in the beaten egg.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill a pie pan with the apple mixture and cover with the second pie crust.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

  3. Serve warm.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Dried apples
Provide the main fruit body and flavor once stewed and mashed into a soft filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown in the oven.
Beaten egg
Binds the mashed apple filling so it holds together when sliced.
Pie crusts
Form the pastry shell and top that encloses the filling while it bakes.

The step that matters

Mash the stewed apples until smooth. Dried apples that are not stewed until very soft stay tough and chunky, so the filling will not spread evenly or set into a smooth, sliceable texture.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, cinnamon, 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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