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Dessert

Apple Custard Pie II

A baked pie with a custard filling made from apples, eggs, milk, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Apple Custard Pie II

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.

Prepare the custard

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the sugar and egg yolks together.

  3. Add the milk and butter, mixing until combined.

  4. Stir in the ground apples and mix well.

  5. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of sugar to the egg whites and mix gently.

  3. Spread the meringue over the baked pie and brown in the oven.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites whip into a meringue that sets and browns on top.
Sour apples
Provide the main flavor and tartness, and moisture that bakes into the custard.
Milk
Supplies liquid that sets with the egg proteins into a soft, custard-like filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother texture in the custard.

The step that matters

Baking the custard until set. Egg proteins set with heat, so underbaking leaves a runny filling while overbaking can make it curdle or weep. Bake until the centre barely jiggles.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, sugar, butter, 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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