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Dessert

Apple Pie

A pastry filled with apples, cloves, sugar, lemon peel and optional quince jam, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and quince match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 164 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 375°F (190°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C).

  2. Peel, core, and quarter the apples.

  3. Place the apple quarters in a pie dish, adding the cloves.

Make the filling

  1. In a mortar, rub together the lemon peel and sugar.

  2. If desired, mix in some quince jam.

  3. Spread the mixture over the apples.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with puff pastry.

  2. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes, until golden brown.

  3. Serve warm.

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 + quincetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + quincetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + quincetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,444 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling and soften into a tender, juicy layer as they bake.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the lemon peel's aromatic oils blend into the fruit.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky, golden top crust over the filling.
Cloves
Add a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the apples.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Baking long enough lets the apples soften and the pastry cook through and brown. Pulling it too early can leave the pastry pale and underdone, and the apple pieces firm.

Swap the quince

The recipe marks quince as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, clove, sugar):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, clove, 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.

More apple pie recipes

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

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