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Dessert

French Apple Pie

A pastry crust filled with a baked apple puree, sugar, butter, lemon rind, and egg yolk, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

French 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 crust

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line a pie plate with puff pastry and brush it with beaten egg.

  3. Prick the pastry with a fork and bake until light and brown.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mash the baked apples into a puree.

  2. Mix in sugar, butter, lemon rind, and egg yolk.

  3. Cook the mixture for 10 minutes.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the apple mixture into the baked crust.

  2. Cover with strips of pastry and bake until brown.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Baked apples
Provide the main body and flavor of the pie filling as a puree.
Puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky shell and top layer that bake to a golden brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown slightly as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the filling a smoother, softer texture.
Egg yolk
Thickens the filling and adds richness as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook the apple mixture for 10 minutes. Cooking the enriched puree thickens it and evaporates excess moisture, so it sets firmly rather than making the baked crust soggy.

Swap the apple

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

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

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