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Dessert

Deep Apple or Plum Pie

A deep pie filled with sliced apples, brown sugar, butter, and sea salt, baked until rich brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Deep Apple or Plum 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

  1. Line a deep pie plate with pastry.

  2. Layer sliced apples in the plate and sprinkle with brown sugar.

  3. Repeat layers until the plate is filled and heaped in the middle.

  4. Dot the top with bits of butter and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  5. Wet the edge of the lower crust, sprinkle with flour, and place the upper crust on top.

  6. Press the edges firmly together.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until rich 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provide the fruit filling that cooks down and gives the pie its body.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and caramel flavour as it melts into the apple juices.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the top brown.
Flour
Thickens the juices from the apples so the filling does not run out.
Pastry
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and holds its shape while baking.

The step that matters

Sprinkling flour over the lower crust. Flour absorbs the juices released by the apples as they cook, thickening the filling. Without it, the filling can stay runny and make the bottom crust soggy.

Swap the apple

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

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

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