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Dessert

Dried Apple Custard

A custard made with dried apples, clarified butter, eggs, rich cream, lemon juice, and lemon rind, baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Dried Apple Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Cook the dried apples until tender.

  2. Mash the cooked apples through a sieve.

  3. While the fruit is warm, add the clarified butter.

Make the custard

  1. Mix in the beaten eggs, rich cream, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind.

Bake

  1. Line a pie dish with the pie crust.

  2. Pour the mixture into the crust.

  3. Bake for 20 minutes.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried apples
Provide the main fruit body and flavour once cooked and mashed into a smooth pulp.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving it structure and a firm, sliceable texture.
Rich cream
Adds richness and moisture, producing a smoother, softer custard.
Clarified butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel in the apple base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the apples and cream.

The step that matters

Mash the cooked apples through a sieve. Pushing the apples through a sieve removes lumps and fibrous pieces, so the custard bakes smooth. Leftover chunks would stay grainy and uneven in texture.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, cream, 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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