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Dessert

Apple Pasties

A pastry filled with sliced apples and sugar, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Pasties

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the pastry

  1. Make a pastry by mixing flour, lard, and butter, adding lard first.

  2. Roll out the pastry and divide the butter into three pieces, placing it on top of the pastry.

  3. Fold and roll out the pastry three times.

  4. Cut the pastry into rounds the size of bread plates.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line each plate with a piece of pastry and cover with thinly sliced apples.

  2. Sprinkle sugar over the apples to taste.

  3. Place another piece of pastry on top and brush with milk.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes, covering with butter paper if it gets too hot.

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 main structure of the pastry dough.
Butter
Creates flaky layers and adds rich flavour to the pastry.
Lard
Adds tenderness and flakiness to the pastry dough.
Apples
Provide moisture and tart flavour that fills the pastry.

The step that matters

Folding and rolling the pastry layers. Folding and rolling spreads the butter into thin sheets within the dough. As the pastry bakes, the butter releases steam and separates the layers, producing flakiness. If the butter softens too much, it blends into the dough and the layers are lost.

Swap the apple

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

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

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