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Dessert

Marlborough Pie or Pudding

A custard apple pie made with cooked apples, eggs, butter, sugar, nutmeg, lemon, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Marlborough Pie or Pudding

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. Run the cooked apples through a colander.

  2. Beat the eggs separately until very light.

  3. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  4. Add the grated nutmeg, lemon rind, and lemon juice to the butter mixture.

  5. Fold in the beaten eggs and the apples.

Bake and serve

  1. Line patty tins with puff pastry and fill with the mixture.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set and 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 + lemontop 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

Eggs
Set the filling into a custard-like texture and add richness when baked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creams with sugar to give the filling a smooth body.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Apples
Provide the main body, moisture and fruity flavour of the filling.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness that balances the sweetness of the filling.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten eggs and the apples. Beaten eggs are full of air, and folding them gently keeps that lightness in the filling. Stirring vigorously deflates the mixture, leading to a denser, less delicate result after baking.

Swap the apple

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

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

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