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Dessert

Apple Custard Pie

A pie made with stewed sour apples, eggs, butter, sugar, nutmeg, and optional spices, baked in two crusts.

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 ↓

Apple Custard Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Peel the sour apples and stew them until soft, with minimal water remaining.

  2. Rub the stewed apples through a colander.

  3. In a bowl, beat three eggs.

  4. Mix in 1 cup of butter and 1 cup of sugar.

  5. Season the mixture with nutmeg and optional spices.

  6. Add small pieces of dried lemon or orange peel while stewing.

  7. Sweeten the mixture before placing it in the pie pan.

  8. Optionally, stir in a beaten egg.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake with two thin crusts until golden.

  2. Serve warm.

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

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

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour apples
Provide the main bulk and tart flavor that balances the sweetness of the filling.
Eggs
Set and thicken the custard, giving the filling structure as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and contributes to golden browning in the baked crust.

The step that matters

Sweeten the mixture before placing it in the pie pan. Eggs set as they bake, so the filling must be fully mixed and evenly seasoned beforehand; uneven mixing leaves pockets of sugar or egg that bake unevenly.

Swap the apple

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

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

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