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Dessert

Apple Pie. No.1

Apple pie made with apples, sugar, flour, nutmeg, and eggs, baked until done.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Apple Pie. No.1

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Peel, slice, and stew the apples until soft.

  2. Mash the apples and season them with nutmeg.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the pie crust with the apple mixture.

  2. Bake until the crust is done.

Add the egg topping and brown

  1. Whip the eggs until frothy, sweeten them, and flavor them.

  2. Pour the whipped eggs over the pie and set it in the oven to 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.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 main body and moisture of the filling, softening as they stew.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Flour
Thickens the apple mixture by binding its liquid.
Eggs
Whipped and baked, they set into a light, custard-like topping and add richness.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the apples.

The step that matters

Setting the whipped egg topping. Eggs set when heated gently, but too much heat or baking too long makes them curdle, turn rubbery, and weep liquid. Watch the topping closely and stop baking once it is just set and golden.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, nutmeg, 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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