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Dessert

Apple Pie

A pastry filled with stewed apples, orange marmalade, and citron peel, baked and 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 ↓

Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Stew the apples in a syrup made by dissolving the sugar in water, being careful not to break them.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a dish with puff pastry and arrange the apples inside, filling the center of each with orange marmalade.

  2. Sprinkle the apples with chopped citron peel and pour over the reduced syrup, boiled down with a little essence of vanilla.

  3. Lay strips of puff pastry over the apples and bake until the pastry is done.

Serve

  1. Serve cold 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
Provide the fruit body that softens during stewing and becomes the pie's filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps the apples hold their shape while stewing.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky crust that encloses the apples and browns in the oven.
Orange marmalade
Adds sweetness and bright citrus flavour to the centre of each apple.

The step that matters

Stew the apples gently. Apples held at a gentle simmer keep their shape, while vigorous boiling breaks down the pectin and cell walls, turning them mushy.

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.

More apple pie recipes

Green 20Dried 19English 13Mock 13German 10Lemon 10 See all 369 →

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