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Dessert

Apple Custard Pie

A pie with a custard filling made from stewed apples, egg yolks, butter, sugar, and seasoning, topped with browned egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,706 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Custard Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Stew the sour apples until soft and press through a colander.

  2. In a bowl, mix the yolks of three eggs, butter, sugar, and seasoning.

Bake

  1. Spread the mixture into a pie crust.

  2. Bake until set.

Top and brown

  1. Spread the beaten egg whites over the top.

  2. Return to the oven to brown the egg whites.

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

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

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Sour apples
Provide the bulk of the filling, with moisture and a tart flavour.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set and add richness.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth texture to the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the apples.
Egg whites
Form a topping that browns and sets into a light, crisp layer.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaked custard stays runny and won't hold its shape, while overbaking makes it grainy and weepy.

Swap the apple

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

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

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