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Dessert

Marlborough Pie

A baked apple pie topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Marlborough 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. Steam or bake the apples until tender.

  2. Press the cooked apples through a sieve while hot.

  3. Add the butter to the apples and let the mixture cool.

  4. Beat the yolks of the eggs.

  5. Mix the yolks with the milk, sugar, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  6. Combine the yolk mixture with the apples and butter.

Bake and top

  1. Line a dish with pastry.

  2. Fill the pastry with the apple mixture.

  3. Bake for 1 hour at 400°F (200°C).

  4. Whip the egg whites until stiff, adding a little sugar.

  5. Heap the froth over the pie.

  6. Return the pie to the oven to set the meringue.

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. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Cooked and sieved, they form the soft, moist body of the filling.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling as it bakes, while whites whip into the meringue topping.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the apple filling.
Milk
Adds moisture and body to the custard-like yolk mixture.
Lemon
Juice and rind add acidity and bright aroma that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Let the apple mixture cool before combining with the yolks. Eggs thicken when heated, so adding yolks to very hot apples can scramble them and leave a grainy filling instead of a smooth, set custard.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, lemon, milk, sugar. 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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