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Dessert

Irish Apple Pie

A pastry‑covered apple pie with brown sugar, optional spices, and quince marmalade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Irish Apple 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Pare and core the apples, then cut them into four or eight pieces.

  3. Arrange the apple pieces in a baking dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Sprinkle with brown sugar and spices, if using.

  2. Add quince marmalade for extra flavor, if desired.

  3. Pour in a little water.

  4. Cover the apples with puff pastry.

  5. Bake for 1 hour.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Apple + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Cinnamon + quincetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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 soften into a tender, juicy layer as they bake.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps create a syrupy, caramelised juice around the apples.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, golden crust that covers and seals the apples while they bake.
Quince marmalade
Adds concentrated fruit flavour and extra pectin-driven body to the filling juices.

The step that matters

Covering the apples with puff pastry. Puff pastry relies on cold fat layers to rise and flake. If it softens or is pressed down onto hot filling, it can turn greasy and dense instead of crisp. Sealing the edges well keeps juices from leaking out.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Clovethe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, cinnamon, lemon, quince. 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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