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Dessert

Apple Pie

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

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

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 the pie

  1. Prepare a puff-paste crust and line the edge of a pie dish.

  2. Layer a thick row of apples in the dish and sprinkle with half the sugar.

  3. Add minced lemon peel, lemon juice, and cloves over the apples.

  4. Top with the remaining apples and sugar, adding another squeeze of lemon juice.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil apple parings and cores in water with mace until flavored, then strain.

  2. Add sugar to the strained liquid and boil until reduced, then pour into the pie.

Bake and finish

  1. Cover with the crust and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  2. After baking, whisk egg yolks with cream, nutmeg, and sugar over low heat until near boiling.

  3. Remove the pie lid and pour the egg mixture inside.

  4. Cut the crust into small pieces and place them decoratively on top.

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 during baking, giving the pie its body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture as they set, giving a rich, custard-like texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, producing a smooth, silky custard when combined with the yolks.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps draw out juices from the apples to form a syrup.
Puff-paste crust
Forms the flaky, buttery pastry that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Whisking the egg yolks and cream over low heat. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated but curdle if they get too hot. Keeping the heat low and stopping near boiling lets the mixture thicken smoothly without turning grainy.

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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