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Dessert

Apple Pie

A pie with puff pastry crust filled with apples, sugar, lemon, cloves, mace, and topped with a cream‑egg custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

Prepare the pie

  1. Prepare a puff pastry crust and place it around the edge of a pie dish.

  2. Layer a thick row of apples in the dish.

  3. Sprinkle half the sugar over the apples.

  4. Spread minced lemon peel over the apples.

  5. Add lemon juice to the apples.

  6. Scatter cloves on top of the apples.

  7. Add the remaining apples.

  8. Sprinkle the remaining sugar over the apples.

  9. Squeeze another lemon juice over the apples.

  10. Boil the apple parings and cores in water with a blade of mace until flavored.

  11. Strain the mixture.

  12. Add sugar to the strained mixture.

  13. Boil the mixture until reduced to a small quantity.

  14. Pour the reduced mixture into the pie.

  15. Cover the pie with the crust.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake the pie in the oven.

  2. Beat the yolks of two eggs with cream, nutmeg, and sugar.

  3. Heat the mixture over low heat, stirring until near boiling.

  4. Remove the pie lid.

  5. Pour the egg mixture inside the pie.

  6. Cut the crust into small triangular pieces.

  7. Place the triangular pieces on top of the pie.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 and soften as they bake, becoming tender and sweet.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream custard as they heat, giving a smooth, set texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, making the custard smooth and creamy.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps draw out juice from the apples.
Puff pastry crust
Forms a flaky, buttery layer that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Heating the egg and cream mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but if the mixture gets too hot it can curdle or scramble. Stir over low heat and stop as it nears boiling so the custard stays smooth.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, clove, mace, egg, cream, 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.

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