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Dessert

Apple Pie

Apple pie made with a puff pastry crust and apples stewed with orange peel, juice, cloves, and mace, topped with a second crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,987 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the crust

  1. Mix flour, butter, and salt to form a dough.

  2. Add ice water until dough forms.

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

  4. Roll out the dough and line the bottom and sides of a pie dish.

Prepare the filling

  1. Stew the sliced apples until soft.

  2. Layer half of the apples in the crust.

  3. Sprinkle half of the sugar over the apples.

  4. Add orange peel, orange juice, and cloves.

  5. Layer the remaining apples and sugar on top.

  6. Sweeten to taste.

  7. Boil the apple peelings and cores with 1 cup of water and a blade of mace.

  8. Strain the liquid.

  9. Boil the strained liquid with a little sugar until thickened.

  10. Pour it into the pie.

Bake

  1. Cover with the upper crust.

  2. Bake for 30-40 minutes until golden.

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 + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough as its proteins develop into gluten.
Unsalted butter
Stays in cold pieces that melt in the oven, creating flaky layers in the crust.
Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling, softening as they cook and releasing their juices.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps thicken the juices into a syrup.
Ice water
Hydrates the flour just enough to bind the dough while keeping the butter cold.

The step that matters

Keep the butter cold while making the dough. Cold butter pieces melt during baking and leave pockets that make the crust flaky. If the butter softens and blends in, the crust turns dense and tough.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

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