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Dessert

To Make an Apple Pie

Apple pie made with apples, sugar, cloves, almonds, citron, orange-flower water, puff pastry, powdered sugar, egg white, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Make an Apple Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA very brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Peel and core the apples.

  2. Boil the apples with the sugar and cloves until soft.

  3. Beat the mixture to a cream with a fork.

  4. Blanch and quarter the almonds, and cut the citron into small pieces.

  5. When the mixture is cold, add the orange-flower water.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a dish with puff pastry and fill it with the apple mixture.

  2. Cover with more puff pastry, sprinkle with powdered sugar, and dampen with egg white and water.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

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. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Clove + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Clove + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,605 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooking apples
Cook down to a soft, sweet filling that forms the body of the pie.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it thicken into a cream as it cooks.
Egg white
Brushed on the top crust to help it brown and become glossy as it bakes.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky top and bottom crusts that enclose the filling.

The step that matters

Let the apple mixture cool before adding the orange-flower water. Orange-flower water is aromatic and its fragrance fades with heat, so adding it to a hot mixture wastes much of the scent.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, almond, orange, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, almond, orange, egg. 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.

More apple pie recipes

Green 20Dried 19English 13Mock 13German 10Lemon 10 See all 369 →

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