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Dessert

Florentine Apple Pie

A pastry pie with stewed apples, orange marmalade, citron, vanilla syrup, topped with pastry strips, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,371 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Florentine 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 apples

  1. Pare and core the apples.

  2. Stew the apples in water and sugar, but do not let them break.

Assemble the pie

  1. Fill a dish with a layer of puff pastry.

  2. Arrange the apples inside, adding a spoonful of orange marmalade in the center of each apple and some chopped citron.

  3. Boil down the syrup with vanilla extract and pour it over the apples.

  4. Lay strips of pastry across the top.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

  2. Let cool and serve with whipped cream.

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. Orange + vanillatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

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

  2. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  3. Apple + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,501 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Apples
Form the filling and give the pie its fruity body once stewed and baked.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky crust that bakes golden and holds the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the stewing liquid and adds flavor to the syrup.
Orange marmalade
Adds sweetness and bitter citrus aroma at the center of each apple.
Vanilla extract
Adds aroma to the boiled-down syrup that coats the apples.

The step that matters

Stew the apples gently. Apples must be cooked in syrup just until tender. Overcooking makes them break down into mush, so they lose their shape and hold less well in the pie.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, vanilla, cream. 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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