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Dessert

Boston Pork and Apple Pie

A pie made with boiled pork, apples, sugar, cinnamon, cloves or allspice, encased in pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Boston Pork and Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the pork until tender, then let it cool and chop it finely.

  2. Peel and chop the apples.

  3. Mix the chopped pork and apples together.

  4. Sweeten with sugar and add cinnamon and cloves or allspice.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the mixture in a deep pie dish and cover with pie crust on both sides.

  2. Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) until thoroughly cooked.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pork + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Sweet salt pork
Adds rich fat and savory flavour that balances the sweet apples.
Greening apples
Provide moisture and tart flavour, softening as the pie bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the savory pork and tart apples.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven, giving structure and a golden finish.

The step that matters

Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) until thoroughly cooked. The pork is already cooked, so the goal is heating the filling evenly. A low, slow oven lets the apples soften and the centre heat through before the crust over-browns.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Applethe original
  3. Quincefits about as well
  4. Raisinfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sugar, cinnamon, clove. 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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