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Dessert

Quince Ob Apple Custards

A custard made from apple juice, lemon juice, sugar, and eggs, thickened in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Quince Ob Apple Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Combine apple juice, lemon juice, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring quickly.

  3. Gradually add the boiling mixture to the well-beaten eggs, stirring constantly.

  4. Thicken the custard in a jug placed in a pan of boiling water.

Quince variation

  1. For quince custards, repeat steps 1-4 but omit the lemon juice.

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

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook and thicken, giving it body.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the tartness of the fruit juice.
Apple juice
Provides the main fruit flavour and liquid base of the custard.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the custard.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling mixture to the eggs. Pouring the hot liquid in too fast or without constant stirring can scramble the eggs. Gradual addition with steady stirring tempers them so the custard thickens smoothly.

Swap the apple

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

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

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