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Dessert

Apple Pie

A baked apple pie with cloves, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, and ale, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

  2. Pare, core, and cut the apples into quarters.

  3. Arrange the apples closely in a pie dish.

Fill and bake

  1. Sprinkle the cloves, sugar, grated lemon peel, lemon juice, and nutmeg among the apples.

  2. Add the ale or water.

  3. Cover the pie with puff pastry.

  4. Bake for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, checking to prevent burning.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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, cooking down to a soft, tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps draw moisture from the apples into a syrup.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp top crust that browns in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Bake for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, checking to prevent burning. Apples release juice as they cook, and the pastry needs enough heat to brown and set. Checking during baking helps catch over-browning of the crust before the filling is fully tender.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, sugar, lemon, nutmeg):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, sugar, lemon, nutmeg. 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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