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Dessert

Dutch Apple Pie

A pastry filled with stewed apples, currants, raisins, candied peel, almonds, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Dutch Apple Pie

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.

Prepare the filling

  1. Stew the apples until soft and sweeten to taste.

  2. Add currants, raisins, candied peel, chopped almonds, and cinnamon.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a dish with part of the puff pastry.

  2. Fill the dish with the cooled apple mixture.

  3. Cover with the remaining puff pastry.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

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. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the main bulk and soft, sweet body of the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, golden crust that encloses the filling.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the filling.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the filling.
Chopped almonds
Add crunch and a nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft apples.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before filling. Cooling the stewed apples keeps them from melting the butter in the puff pastry, which would prevent it from rising into flaky layers.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, raisin, almond, cinnamon):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, raisin, almond, cinnamon. 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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