Name: Apple Custard
Ingredients: several ripe mellow apples; custard (as for pies); cream sauce or sweetened milk, flavored with lemon

Why it works: Apple and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,089 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Apple Custard

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

several ripe mellow apples
custard (as for pies)
cream sauce or sweetened milk, flavored with lemon

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Bake

Slice the apples very thin and cover the bottom of a baking dish with them.
Pour the custard over the apples.
Bake for about 20 minutes.

Serve

Serve with cream sauce or sweetened milk flavored with lemon.

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.

Apple + creamtop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,089 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples: Provide the fruit base and tender, mild flavor that the custard sets on top of.
Custard: Sets during baking to form a soft, creamy layer over the apples.

“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.