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Dessert

Apple Custard

A baked apple custard pie with a pastry shell, sweetened apples, and optional meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Apple Custard

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 filling

  1. Stew the apples until tender.

  2. Run the cooked apples through a sieve.

  3. Add salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon to the apple mixture.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. If meringue is desired, beat the egg whites and gradually add 3 tablespoons of sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Pour the apple mixture into a pastry shell and top with meringue.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until the meringue is golden.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 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. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 body of the filling, with tartness and fruit flavor.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set, giving the filling a smooth, rich texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that gives the optional meringue its volume and structure.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer mouthfeel in the filling.

The step that matters

Adding sugar gradually to the egg whites. Adding sugar slowly while whipping lets the foam build a stable structure. Dumping it in all at once, or getting any fat or yolk into the whites, can stop them from reaching stiff peaks.

Swap the apple

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

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

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