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Dessert

Apple Meringue

A pie filled with cooked apples and topped with a lattice of meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Apple Meringue

Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Meringue

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

  1. Mix cooked apples with sugar and lemon juice.

  2. Beat egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff.

Assemble

  1. Fold egg whites into the cooled apple mixture.

  2. Line a pie pan with pie dough and fill with the apple mixture.

  3. Create a lattice top with strips of dough, one inch wide and one inch apart.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until lightly browned.

  2. Alternatively, bake the pie first, then top with egg whites and brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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
Form the bulk of the filling and supply moisture and tartness as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilize the beaten egg white foam.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that gives the topping its light, airy structure and set when baked.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps keep the egg white foam stable.

The step that matters

Fold the egg whites into the cooled apple mixture. Hot filling would partly cook and deflate the whites, and overmixing knocks air out of the foam, so the topping loses its lift and turns dense.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

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

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