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Dessert

Dried Apple Custard Pie

A custard pie filled with stewed apples, eggs, milk, sugar, butter, nutmeg, and lemon juice, baked until set.

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 ↓

Dried Apple Custard Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Stew the apples in water until perfectly done, then strain and sweeten to taste.

  2. Prepare the mixture by beating together the eggs, milk, sugar, melted butter, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture over the apples in the pastry crusts, thick enough to cover them well.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding moisture and softness.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps it brown lightly at the edges.
Stewed apples
Provide the fruit flavor and body beneath the custard.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the custard.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Pulling the pie too early leaves a runny custard, while overbaking can make it weep or turn grainy.

Swap the apple

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

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

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