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Pork Apple-pie

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Allspice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pork Apple-pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

  1. Prepare the pie crust and place it in a large deep pie dish.

  2. Slice the fat pork very thin.

  3. Slice the juicy apples.

  4. Layer the apples and pork in the dish, adding a little allspice, pepper, and sugar between each layer.

  5. Repeat the layering until you have four or five layers of each.

  6. Cover with a pie crust on top.

  7. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

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. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Apple + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together998 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pork + allspicetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,194 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

Swap the apple

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, allspice, pepper, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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