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Dessert

Mock Apple Pie

A sweet pastry crust filled with a lemon‑sugar mixture and puff pastry, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mock Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Crush the Boston cracker finely with a rolling pin and place it in a bowl.

  2. Pour in the cold water and add the sugar, lemon juice and pulp, grated lemon rind, and nutmeg.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie plate with half of the puff pastry.

  2. Pour the mixture into the lined pie plate and cover with the remaining pastry.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Boston cracker
Crushed crackers soak up the liquid and form the thick, apple-like body of the filling.
Fine white sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling set into a syrupy texture as it bakes.
Lemon juice and pulp
Provides acidity that brightens the flavour and mimics the tartness of apples.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, buttery top and bottom crust that encloses the filling.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into the lined pie plate and cover with the remaining pastry.. The cracker filling is wet and must be sealed evenly so steam is contained and the crust bakes crisp rather than soggy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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