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Dessert

Apple-custard Pie

A baked pie with a custard filling of milk, eggs, apples, butter, sugar, nutmeg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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 custard

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine milk, egg yolks, grated apples, melted butter, sugar, nutmeg, and salt.

  3. Pour mixture into pie crust and bake until set.

Make the frosting and finish

  1. Beat egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually add sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread frosting over pie and brown delicately under broiler.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + appletop 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 + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set when baked, giving the pie a creamy texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid base of the custard, which sets gently in the oven.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks with sugar to form a light, airy topping.
Grated apples
Supply the fruit flavor and moisture in the custard filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the egg whites hold stiff peaks in the frosting.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Adding sugar gradually while beating builds a stable foam. Under-beaten whites stay runny and spread unevenly, while over-beaten whites turn dry and grainy.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, 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.

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