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Dessert

One Crust Apple Pie

A pie made with a single crust, filled with quartered apples and sugar, topped with a frothy egg white mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,790 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

One Crust Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and bake the filling

  1. Line your pie plate with pastry.

  2. Fill the plate with quartered apples and sweeten with sugar.

  3. Bake until the apples are tender, then remove from the oven.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and sweeten with powdered sugar and nutmeg.

  2. Spread the egg mixture over the pie.

  3. Return the pie to the oven and brown lightly.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  4. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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 bulk of the filling and moisture that softens as the pie bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped to a foam, they set into a light topping that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and balances their tartness.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the egg white topping and dissolves easily into the foam.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the topping.
Pastry
Forms the base that holds the apple filling while it bakes.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to a stiff froth. Whites beaten to stiff peaks trap air that sets into a stable foam when heated. Under-beaten whites stay runny, slide off the apples and brown unevenly.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, nutmeg. 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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