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Dessert

Apple Pie

Apple Pie is a pie made with sliced sour apples, sugar, flour, and optional vanilla, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,501 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. 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.

Prepare

  1. Line a pie plate with Mrs. Baker's pie crust.

  2. Fill the crust with sliced sour apples.

Assemble and bake

  1. Mix 1 teaspoon of flour with 1 cup of sugar and sprinkle over the apples.

  2. Cover with the top crust and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 30 minutes.

Alternative method

  1. Alternatively, cook the apples first, sweeten, flavor with vanilla, bake in one crust, and frost.

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

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

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

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

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

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

Sour apples
Provide the filling's bulk and tartness, balancing the sweetness of the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and draws moisture from the apples to form the filling's juices.
Flour
Thickens the juices released by the apples as the pie bakes.
Mrs. baker's pie crust
Forms the structure that holds the filling and browns during baking.

The step that matters

Sprinkle the flour and sugar evenly over the apples. Flour thickens the juices the apples release as they cook. Uneven distribution leaves pockets of runny filling or raw flour taste.

Swap the vanilla

The recipe marks vanilla as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Pearfits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, 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.

More apple pie recipes

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

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