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Marmalade Custard Pies

Marmalade custard pies are custard-filled pastry shells topped with powdered sugar, rich cream, or optional icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Marmalade Custard Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Bake rich puff or egg-paste shells.

  2. Beat the yolks of 6 eggs until thick and firm.

  3. Stir in 12 ounces of marmalade or jelly.

  4. Boil for about 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

  5. Remove from heat and let cool in a stoneware dish.

Fill and serve

  1. Once cool, fill the shells with the custard.

  2. Serve with powdered sugar and rich cream, or cover with icing and brown slightly in the oven.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set, giving it a rich, firm body.
Marmalade or jelly
Provides sweetness, fruity flavour and body to the custard.

The step that matters

Boil for about 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but continued stirring prevents them from scrambling or sticking to the pan. Constant stirring keeps the heat even so the custard sets smooth rather than lumpy.

“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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