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Dessert

Apple and Onion Pie

A savory pie with apples, onions, and a hard‑boiled egg, topped with short crust pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Apple and Onion 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 filling

  1. Combine apples and onions with a little water in a pot.

  2. Stew gently until nearly tender.

  3. Season the mixture with salt and pepper.

  4. Add the butter and stir until melted.

Assemble and bake

  1. Transfer the mixture to a small pie dish.

  2. Arrange the quartered egg on top.

  3. Cover with the short crust pastry.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Apple + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Break down into a soft filling that gives the pie its body and mild sweetness.
Spanish onions
Soften and sweeten as they stew, adding savoury depth to the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the stewed filling.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds firmness and substance to the pie, set in the filling.

The step that matters

Stew gently until nearly tender. Apples and onions cooked too hard can turn to mush or scorch before the pie bakes. Gentle heat softens them evenly, so the filling is tender but holds its shape under the pastry.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, egg, butter, pepper):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, egg, butter, pepper. 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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