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Dessert

Morganza Baked Custard

A baked custard with milk, eggs, butter, sugar, apples, and dried currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Morganza Baked Custard

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard

  1. Combine milk, salt, butter, and sugar in a pot.

  2. Heat the mixture until it boils.

  3. Stir in the beaten eggs quickly.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cover a dish with pie crust.

  2. Fill the bottom of the crust with apples, placing a small piece of crust in each apple cavity.

  3. Add 4 or 5 dried currants into each apple.

  4. Pour the custard mixture over the apples.

  5. Bake for 1.5 hours at 350°F (175°C).

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

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

  2. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Nutmeg + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the custard and set it into a tender, sliceable texture when baked.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, providing moisture and richness.
Butter
Adds fat, contributing richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the eggs and milk.
Apples
Provide fruit flavor and moisture that soften and blend into the baked custard.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten eggs quickly. Eggs can scramble when they meet hot liquid. Adding them quickly and stirring constantly spreads the heat so the custard stays smooth. Cooling afterward keeps the proteins from setting too early before baking.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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