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Dessert

English Apple Pie

A deep-dish apple pie with pastry crust, apples, sugar, lemon, cloves, mace, and quince or marmalade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and quince work together. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

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

  2. Line the sides of a deep dish with pastry crust.

  3. Place a thick layer of quartered apples in the dish.

Make the filling

  1. Sprinkle half of the sugar, grated lemon peel, and cloves over the apples.

  2. Add the remaining apples and sugar, then drizzle with lemon juice.

  3. Boil the apple cores and peelings in water with the mace until soft.

  4. Press the mixture through a colander.

  5. Boil the mixture with sugar.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the pie.

  2. Add quince or marmalade.

  3. Cover with the upper crust, then bake.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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, softening as they bake to give the pie its body.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and draws juice out of the apples, forming a syrup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the apple flavour and balances the sugar.
Quince or marmalade
Adds pectin, which helps the cooked filling thicken and set.
Pastry crust
Forms the shell that holds the juices in while the pie bakes.

The step that matters

Boil the strained apple liquid with sugar. This liquid is rich in natural pectin. Boiling it long enough concentrates the sugar and pectin so the filling thickens, but overboiling can scorch it or turn it too stiff.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, lemon, clove, quince):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, lemon, clove, 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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