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Dessert

A Creamed Apple Pie

A pie with sliced apples, lemon peel, cloves, sugar, water, custard, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

A Creamed Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pie

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Roll out the puff pastry and place a rim around the edge of your pie dish.

  3. Fill the dish with the sliced apples, lemon peel, cloves, and sugar.

  4. Add the water and cover the apples with a flour and water paste to keep them moist.

Bake and cool

  1. Bake the pie until the apples are tender.

  2. Remove the paste from the apples.

  3. Let the apples cool.

Top and finish

  1. Spread boiled custard over the apples to cover them completely.

  2. Cut shapes from the remaining puff pastry for decoration.

  3. Place the pastry shapes on top of the custard.

  4. Brush the pastry shapes with egg white.

  5. Sprinkle sugar over the pastry shapes.

  6. Lightly moisten the sugar with water.

  7. Bake again until the pastry is golden brown.

  8. Serve.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Baking apples
Provide the main filling, softening during baking to become tender.
Puff pastry
Forms the rim and decorative shapes, puffing and browning as it bakes.
Boiled custard
Adds a creamy layer that covers the cooked apples.
Egg white
Glaze that helps the pastry shapes brown and turn glossy.

The step that matters

Cooling the apples before adding the custard. Spreading warm or hot custard over the apples can melt it and make it thin or runny, so letting the apples cool first keeps the custard layer set and smooth.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, clove, sugar, flour, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, clove, sugar, flour, egg. 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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