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Dessert

Apple Custard Pie

A pie filled with a custard made from sour apple sauce, eggs, milk, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Apple Custard Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apple filling

  1. Stew the sour apple sauce, then sift it.

  2. Sweeten the apple sauce to taste and flavor it with lemon or nutmeg.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with sugar.

  4. Mix the beaten yolks into the apple sauce.

  5. Add milk according to the size of the pie just before baking.

Bake and top

  1. Bake the pie until set.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Spread the stiff egg whites over the baked pie.

  4. Sprinkle a little white sugar on the egg whites.

  5. Return the pie to the oven for 5 minutes.

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

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

  2. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

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

Sour apple sauce
Provides the main apple flavor and the body of the custard filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard filling as they set when baked, giving it a creamy structure.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam that forms a light topping and browns in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the custard, helping it bake into a soft, set filling.

The step that matters

Bake the pie until set. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, so underbaking leaves a runny filling while overbaking can make it curdle and weep. Watch for a set center before adding the meringue topping.

Swap the apple

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

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

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