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Dessert

Baked Apple Custard

A baked dessert of stewed apples topped with custard and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Baked Apple Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel, cut, and core the apples.

  2. Place the apples in a lined saucepan with water, sugar, and lemon juice.

  3. Stew the apples until tender.

  4. Rub the stewed apples through a sieve.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the fruit at the bottom of a pie dish.

  2. Pour the custard over the apples.

  3. Grate nutmeg on top.

  4. Bake lightly.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the main fruit base, softening into a purée when stewed and sieved.
Custard
Forms the creamy layer that sets gently over the apple purée when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and balances the tartness of the fruit and lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the stewed apples.

The step that matters

Rub the stewed apples through a sieve. Apples must be fully tender before sieving, or the purée will be lumpy and uneven. A smooth base gives the custard an even surface to bake onto.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, 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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