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Dessert

Hot Apple Pie

A pie of peeled, cored, sliced apples baked with sugar, lemon peel, lemon juice, optional cider, butter, and crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cider are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,238 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

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

  2. Place a layer of apples in a pie dish.

  3. Sprinkle half the sugar and lemon peel over the apples.

  4. Squeeze lemon juice or add cider if the apples are not tart.

Assemble

  1. Add the remaining apples, sugar, and any liquid from boiling.

  2. Cover with pie crust.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until golden brown.

  2. Add butter when serving if desired.

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 + cidertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples
Form the bulk of the filling, softening and releasing juices as they bake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps draw moisture out of the apples to form a syrup.
Lemon peel
Adds bright aroma from its fragrant oils.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sugar and keeps the apple flavor lively.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the warm filling when served.

The step that matters

Adjust the tartness before covering the pie. Apples vary in acidity, and sugar alone can make a filling taste flat or cloying. Lemon juice or cider adds acid that balances sweetness, so tasting the apples first and adding liquid only if they are not tart helps the filling taste balanced.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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