Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Sauce Pie

A puff pastry pie filled with sweetened apple sauce and topped with whipped cream and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Apple Sauce Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Line a pie plate with a thinly rolled crust of puff pastry and sprinkle with flour.

  2. Lay on a similar crust and bake until brown.

Assemble and serve

  1. Separate the crusts and spread the lower crust with sweetened apple sauce.

  2. Cover with whipped cream.

  3. Lay on the upper crust and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry crust
Forms flaky layers that hold the filling and brown when baked.
Flour
Dusted on the crust to absorb moisture and help prevent sogginess.
Sweetened apple sauce
Provides moist, sweet fruit filling between the crusts.
Whipped cream
Adds a soft, creamy layer that contrasts with the crisp pastry.
Powdered sugar
Adds a light sweet finish on the top crust.

The step that matters

Baking the bottom crust until brown. Puff pastry relies on butter steam to rise and crisp. If it is underbaked it stays pale and soft, and it may soak up the apple sauce and whipped cream placed on it later.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sauce, cream, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sauce, cream, sugar. 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 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes