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Dessert

Apple Pie

Apple pie made with puff pastry crust, apples, sugar, lemon, cloves, mace, egg yolk cream, nutmeg, and optional quince or marmalade.

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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the apples

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

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

  3. Peel, quarter, and core the apples.

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

  5. Finely mince a little lemon peel and spread it over the apples and sugar.

  6. Squeeze in some lemon juice and scatter a few cloves on top.

  7. Add the remaining apples and sugar, with another squeeze of lemon juice.

Make the syrup

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

  2. Strain the mixture, add a little sugar, and boil until reduced.

  3. Pour the reduced liquid into the pie, cover with the crust, and bake.

Make the custard and finish

  1. Once baked, beat the egg yolks with cream, nutmeg, and sugar over low heat until near boiling.

  2. Remove the pie lid and pour the mixture inside.

  3. Cut the crust into small triangular pieces and place them 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
Provide the main body and tart flavor of the filling, softening as they bake.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture into a rich custard that sets as it cools.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the custard poured into the pie.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps draw out juices to form a syrupy filling.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the apple flavor and helps keep the apples fresh-tasting.

The step that matters

Beat the egg yolks with cream over low heat. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can curdle or scramble if overheated. Keeping the heat low and stirring steadily gives a smooth custard that sets properly.

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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