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Dessert

Apple Custard Pie

A baked pie with stewed apples, butter, sugar, powdered cracker, lemon rind, egg yolks, and meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. 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.

Make the filling

  1. Stew the apples until dry and sift them.

  2. While the apples are still hot, add the butter and stir until melted.

  3. Mix in the sugar, powdered cracker, and grated lemon rind.

  4. Add the beaten egg yolks and combine well.

  5. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Top with meringue

  1. For the meringue, beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add 2 tablespoons of sugar and a few drops of vanilla.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie and return to the oven until golden brown.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 tart flavor of the custard filling once stewed and sifted.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they set during baking, giving the custard its structure.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the meringue topping, which browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the meringue whip and brown.

The step that matters

Baking the filled pie until set. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, so underbaking leaves a runny filling while overbaking can make it curdle or weep. Bake until just set in the centre.

Swap the apple

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

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

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