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Dessert

Green Apple Custard Pie

A custard pie made with stewed green apples, eggs, milk, butter, nutmeg, lemon juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon 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 ↓

Green Apple Custard Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Stew the apples in enough water to prevent burning.

  2. Mash and strain the cooked apples.

  3. Let the apples cool, then mix in the beaten eggs, sweet milk, melted butter, grated nutmeg, lemon juice, and sugar.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  2. Bake until set and 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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the filling its structure.
Green apples
Provide the bulk of the filling and its tart, fruity flavor.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and richness, helping form a smooth custard.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the custard brown at the edges.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden brown. Egg proteins coagulate as they heat, so the custard sets firm. Underbaking leaves it runny, while overbaking can make it weep or curdle.

Swap the apple

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

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

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