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Dessert

Apple Pie

Apple pie with short pastry crust, apples, quince, brown sugar, lemon peel, cloves, mace, butter, water, egg yolk cream topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and quince work together. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Apple 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.

Prepare the pie

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Roll out the short pastry and lay it thickly around the edge of the pie dish.

  3. Place cloves, chopped lemon peel, and a little mace at the bottom of the dish.

  4. Layer half of the quartered apples in the dish, followed by some brown sugar and 2 quarters of quince.

  5. Add the remaining apples and 2-3 more pieces of quince on top.

  6. Cover with sugar, dot with butter, and add a little water.

  7. Cover with the upper pastry and bake in the oven.

  8. Soak the apples to absorb the redness of the quince.

Finish with custard

  1. If desired, after a few minutes out of the oven, beat the egg yolks with the thick cream and pour over the apples.

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 + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Clove + quincetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling and tart, fruity flavour as they soften.
Quince
Adds perfume and a deeper colour to the apples during cooking.
Egg yolks
Enrich the cream and set into a custard when poured over the hot pie.
Thick cream
Adds richness and fat, softening the tart filling and helping the custard set smoothly.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and caramel notes that balance the tart apples.

The step that matters

Soak the apples to absorb the redness of the quince. The record gives no timing or method for this step, so it is unclear how long to soak or what to soak in. Quince colours fruit strongly, so the apples may turn an unappealing red if not handled as intended.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, lemon, apple, sugar, quince, butter, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, lemon, apple, sugar, quince, butter, 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.

More apple pie recipes

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

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