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Dessert

Fruit Pie

Fruit pie made with apples, raisins, sugar, butter, and spices, baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fruit 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Make a pie crust and place a layer in the bottom of a 2-quart basin.

Layer the pie

  1. Add a layer of chopped apples, about 2 inches thick.

  2. Layer chopped raisins on top, then sprinkle with sugar and small pieces of butter.

  3. Add spices like cloves and nutmeg to taste.

  4. Repeat layering with crust, apples, raisins, sugar, and butter until the dish is full.

  5. Finish with a crust on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 2 hours.

  2. Turn out the pie.

  3. Sprinkle with 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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 tender, fruity body as they soften in the oven.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the layers.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps draw moisture from the fruit to form a syrupy filling.
Pie crust
Encloses the layered filling and gives the pie its structure and a golden, crisp edge.

The step that matters

Bake for 2 hours at low heat. Apples need a long, gentle bake to soften fully and release juices that set into the filling. Too little time leaves firm, underdone fruit and a runny base, while the low oven helps the crust cook through without burning before the apples are tender.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, butter, clove, 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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