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Dessert

Apple Custard Pie

A pie of stewed apples mixed with nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar, butter, and egg, baked without an upper crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Apple Custard Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Stew the apples until tender.

  2. Strain the apples through a colander.

  3. Flavor the strained apples with nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar, and melted butter.

  4. Beat the egg and mix it into the apple mixture.

  5. If the apples are not tart, add a little lemon juice for extra flavor.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) without an upper crust.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Apples
Provide the bulk and main flavor of the filling once stewed and strained.
Egg
Sets the strained apple mixture into a custard as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the apples.

The step that matters

Beat the egg into the apple mixture. The egg is the only setting agent in the filling. It must be fully blended into the cooled, strained apples so it sets evenly as a custard rather than leaving streaks or curdled pockets.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar, butter, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar, butter, 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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