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Dessert

Salt Pork Apple Pie

A pie of tart apples topped with salt pork and pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,581 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Salt Pork Apple Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Line a pie dish with pastry.

  2. Nearly fill it with tart quartered apples.

  3. Season the apples with coarse black pepper.

  4. Cover the apples with thin slices of salt pork.

  5. Place a layer of pastry on top.

Bake

  1. Bake for 1 hour in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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. Apple + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Apple + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Pastry
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and holds it while baking.
Tart quartered apples
Provide the bulk of the filling and a sharp acidity that balances the rich pork.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat that renders into the apples and flavors the filling.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, pork):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, pork. 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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