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Dessert

Apple Custard Pie

A pie filled with a custard of grated apples, eggs, milk, and nutmeg, topped with boiled apple slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon 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 ↓

Apple Custard Pie

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the grated apples, eggs, nutmeg, and milk or cream.

  3. Sweeten the mixture to taste and pour it into a pie pastry.

Make the apple mixture

  1. In a separate pan, combine the sliced apples, sugar, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind.

  2. Boil the apple mixture for about 2 hours.

  3. Once cooled, turn the mixture into a mold.

Serve

  1. Serve with thick cream.

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 + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and bind the grated apples into a creamy filling.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the custard a softer texture.
Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling and its fruity flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the apples and lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the apple flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the apple mixture for about 2 hours. Long cooking softens and concentrates the apples and sugar, so the filling becomes thick and evenly cooked rather than watery.

Swap the apple

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

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

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