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Dessert

Fried Apple Pie

A pie made by cooking apples with butter, corn syrup, sugar, and lard, then baking in a pie shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Fried Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Select red apples, wash, core, and chop them finely, leaving the peelings on.

  2. In a skillet, combine apples, corn syrup, sugar, butter, and lard.

  3. Cook until the apples are mushy, tender, and thick.

Assemble the pie

  1. Bake a pie shell.

  2. Spread the apple mixture in the shell, sprinkle with cinnamon, and cover the pie.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Corn + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Syrup + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together990 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling, and their moisture softens and thickens as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cooking liquid reduce to a thicker, richer filling.
Corn syrup
Adds sweetness and keeps the filling smooth by discouraging sugar crystals from forming.
Butter
Adds rich flavor and fat that carries aroma through the filling.
Lard
Adds fat that gives the filling a rich, tender mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cook the apples until mushy, tender, and thick. Apples release a lot of liquid as they cook. If the mixture is cut short, the filling stays watery and soaks into the pie shell, leaving the crust soggy. Cooking until thick lets that liquid evaporate first.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, corn, syrup, sugar, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, corn, syrup, sugar, cinnamon. 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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