Skip to main content
Dessert

English Apple Pie

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the filling

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

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

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

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

Make the apple syrup

  1. Boil the apple cores and peelings in water with the blade of mace until soft.

  2. Press the mixture through a colander, boil with sugar, and pour into the pie.

  3. Add quince or marmalade if desired.

Bake

  1. Cover with the upper crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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
Provide the bulk of the filling and, as they soften, its tender, fruity body.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, once dissolved in the boiled syrup, adds body and helps set the juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the apple flavour and balances the sweetness.
Pastry crust
Forms the structure that holds the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Pressing the cooked cores and peelings through a colander. Apple cores and peelings are rich in pectin, which thickens the syrup as it cooks. Pressing out the solids keeps the liquid smooth, so it pours into the pie without bits and sets the filling rather than leaving it watery.

Swap the quince

The recipe marks quince as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, lemon, clove, mace):

  1. Orangefits about as well
  2. Quincethe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Pearfits about as well

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

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesQuince JellyQuince Jelly131 recipes