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Dessert

Dried Apple Custard Pie

A custard pie made with stewed apples, eggs, butter, sugar, cornstarch, lemon juice, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Dried Apple Custard Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Stew the apples until soft and rub through a colander.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and egg white, butter, sugar, cornstarch, lemon juice, and nutmeg.

  3. Beat all ingredients together until well combined.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

  2. Top with meringue and brown in the oven.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the filling and add richness, helping it set into a smooth custard.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, tender texture and smooth mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the apples and lemon.
Cornstarch
Thickens the filling so it holds its shape when baked.
Apples
Provide the main bulk, moisture, and fruit flavor of the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Underbaking leaves the egg-thickened filling loose and runny, while overbaking can make the eggs curdle and weep. The filling is ready when it has firmed but still jiggles slightly in the center.

Swap the apple

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

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

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