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Dessert

Apple Cheesecakes, Good

A baked apple cheesecake made with applesauce, eggs, breadcrumbs, and pastry, served with jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Apple Cheesecakes, Good

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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the apple sauce, beaten eggs, and bread crumbs.

  3. Line patty pans with the pastry.

  4. Fill the pastry with the apple mixture, about three-quarters full.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until golden brown.

  2. Serve hot with melted jelly or cold with dollops of jelly.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + breadtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Apple + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,461 recipes

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

  5. Apple + saucetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together965 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Apple sauce
Provides the main body and apple flavour of the filling.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the filling into a sliceable custard-like texture.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the apple sauce and help the filling hold its shape.
Short or flaky pastry
Forms the case that holds the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Filling the pastry three-quarters full. Eggs expand and set as they bake, so overfilling can cause the filling to spill over the pastry edges, while underfilling leaves too little filling for the case.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Pumpkinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, bread, 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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