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 ↓
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
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Roll out the puff pastry and place it around the edge of a pie dish.
Peel, core, and slice the apples.
Make the filling
Mix the apples with half the sugar, lemon juice, and mace.
If desired, add marmalade for extra flavor.
Beat the egg yolks and mix them into the apple mixture.
Pour the apple mixture into the pastry-lined dish.
Bake
Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.
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.
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Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,551 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Apple + macetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together865 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Lemon + macetop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,315 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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
- Puff pastry
- Forms a flaky, crisp crust that holds the filling in the dish.
- Apples
- Provide the bulk of the filling and soften into a tender, moist layer as they bake.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the filling and helps the surface brown as it bakes.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the apple flavor and slows browning of the cut fruit.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich the filling and help it set into a richer, thicker texture.
- Mace
- Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the apples.
The step that matters
Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown. The oven must already be at 400°F when the pie goes in. A hot start helps the puff pastry rise and set into flaky layers before the juices soak into it.
Swap the mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, lemon, egg):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Gingerfits better
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, lemon, egg. 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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