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Dessert

Green Apple Pie

A pie made with sliced apples, sugar, cinnamon, flour, butter, and a custard of milk, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel, core, and slice tart apples enough for a pie.

  2. Sprinkle the apples with about three tablespoonfuls of sugar, a teaspoonful of cinnamon, a small level tablespoonful of sifted flour, and two tablespoonfuls of water. Add a few bits of butter and stir all together with a spoon.

  3. Put the mixture into a pie tin lined with pie paste.

  4. Cover with a top crust.

  5. Bake for about forty minutes.

Make the custard

  1. Strain two cupfuls of thick stewed apples through a colander.

  2. Beat the whites and yolks of the eggs lightly.

  3. Mix the yolks well with the apples, flavoring with nutmeg.

  4. Beat the milk into the mixture.

  5. Beat the whites into the mixture last.

  6. Let the crust partly bake before turning in this filling.

  7. Bake the pie with only one crust, like all custard pies.

Second custard pie

  1. Select fair sweet apples, pare and grate them.

  2. To every teacupful of the apple, add two eggs well beaten, two tablespoonfuls of fine sugar, one of melted butter, the grated rind, and half the juice of one lemon, half a wine-glass of brandy, and one teacupful of milk. Mix all well.

  3. Pour into a deep plate lined with paste.

  4. Put a strip of the paste around the edge of the dish.

  5. Bake for thirty minutes.

  6. Lay a crust in your plates.

  7. Slice apples thin and half fill your plates.

  8. Pour over them a custard made of four eggs and one quart of milk, sweetened and seasoned to your taste.

  9. Peel sour apples and stew until soft, leaving not much water.

  10. Rub through a colander.

  11. Beat three eggs for each pie to be baked.

  12. Add one cupful of butter and one cupful of sugar for three pies.

  13. Season with nutmeg.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

503Calories
16 gProtein
26 gFat
57 gCarbs

Counts 8 of 10 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 8 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Apple1 medium (182g)95
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Cinnamon1 tsp ground (2.6g)6
Waternot in our table0
Pienot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk and tartness of the filling and softened body when stewed.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the filling its firm, creamy structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding softness and moisture to the set filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the crust and custard brown as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a rounder, more tender flavor.
Flour (in the method)
Lightly thickens the apple juices so the filling does not run when cut.

The step that matters

Partly bake the crust before adding the filling. Custard fillings are wet and cook slowly, so a raw crust can stay soggy underneath. Partly baking the crust first sets it so it holds up while the custard sets.

Swap the apple

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

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

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