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Dessert

Apple Custard Pie

A pie filled with stewed apples mixed with butter, sugar, eggs, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apple Custard Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the apples

  1. Stew quartered apples in ¼ cup water until tender.

  2. Rub the cooked apples through a colander.

Make the filling

  1. While the apples are still hot, stir in 1 tablespoon of butter, 1 cup of sugar, 2 beaten eggs, and ½ cup of cream.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a deep pie plate with a thinly rolled pie crust.

  2. Fill the pie plate with the apple mixture.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  4. Optionally, add a meringue topping after baking.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 tart fruit flavor of the custard filling.
Eggs
Help the custard set and hold its shape when baked.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the filling a smoother texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silkier mouthfeel in the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the apples.

The step that matters

Stir the butter, sugar, eggs and cream into the apples while they are still hot. The warm apples melt the butter and dissolve the sugar, helping the mixture blend smoothly. Eggs stirred into very hot or boiling fruit can scramble in lumps, so the apples should be warm, not boiling, when the eggs go in. Even blending lets the custard bake to a uniform set.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, cream. 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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