Name: Apple Custard Pie
Ingredients: tart apples; 2 eggs; 1 tablespoon almond butter; ½ cup sugar; a little grated nutmeg

Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Apple Custard Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

Stew the tart apples until soft and as dry as possible.
Pass the apples through a colander.
Add the beaten eggs, almond butter, sugar, and nutmeg to the apples. Mix well and pour into a pie crust.

Bake

Bake until set.
If using frosting, reduce the sugar in the pie.

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.

Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,115 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,245 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,790 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Apple + almondtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,025 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Tart apples: Provide the main body and flavor of the filling once cooked down.
Eggs: Set when baked, giving the filling structure and a custard-like firmness.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the apples.
Almond butter: Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smoother, softer texture.

The step that matters

Stew the apples until dry. Apples hold a lot of water. If they stay wet, the filling will be runny and may not set properly when baked.

Swap the apple

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Applethe original

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