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Dessert

Apple Pot Pie

A pie with sliced apples, sugar, and a biscuit-like dough crust, baked until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Apple Pot Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Sift flour with baking powder and salt.

  2. Rub in cold butter, then add milk to form a dough like tea biscuits.

Assemble and cook

  1. Line a shallow stewpan with the dough, leaving 2 inches from the bottom.

  2. Pour in water, apples, and sugar.

  3. Wet the edges and cover with remaining dough.

  4. Cover the stewpan and boil for 20 minutes.

  5. Transfer to a 350°F (175°C) oven until apples are cooked.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from oven, cut the top crust into four equal parts.

  2. Dish the apples and place pieces of side crust cut into diamonds and top crust on a plate.

  3. Serve with 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Flour
Forms the dough's structure so the crust holds its shape around the apples.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to make the crust tender and flaky.
Royal baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping it rise and lighten as it bakes.
Apples
Provide the main filling, softening as they cook through.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and adds to the filling's flavour.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to bind the dough together.

The step that matters

Wet the edges and cover with remaining dough. Dampening the edges helps the top and bottom crusts seal, so the filling's juices don't leak out during cooking.

Swap the apple

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

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

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