Home › Pies and Pastry › Cream Apple Pie
Cream Apple Pie
Make an apple pie in the usual way. When it is sufficiently cooked, take it out of the oven, cut out the pastry from the middle, and, when cold, pour a pint of good custard in its place. Put some ornaments of puff paste on the cover. Any kind of firm fruit may be sent to table in the same way.
This is an assembly instruction more than a recipe: a finished double-crust apple pie is opened up and filled with cold stirred custard. The whole thing depends on the custard being properly thickened and properly cold before it goes in.
- Bake the pie first, on its ownThe recipe says only to make an apple pie "in the usual way" and bake it until "sufficiently cooked"; it gives no temperature or time, and specifies only a pastry cover. Bake as you normally would, until the juices bubble and the apples give way to a knife. Nothing about the custard changes that stage.
- "Cut out the pastry from the middle"Once baked, cut a disc out of the centre of the top crust with a small sharp knife, leaving a border of an inch or two intact. Lift the disc off and keep it; it can go back on as part of the decoration.
- A pint of custardTwo to two and a half cups, depending on whether the pint is US (16 fl oz) or imperial (20 fl oz); the English idiom of the recipe suggests the latter. "Good custard" here means a stirred pouring custard — milk, or milk and cream, with egg yolks and sugar, cooked over low heat until it coats a spoon (170–180F) and no further. Baked custard set firm in a dish will not pour.
- Both parts must be coldThe hinge of the whole thing. Warm custard poured into a warm pie thins out, soaks the crust and runs when cut. Cool the pie completely, chill the custard with a film of plastic on its surface, then fill and refrigerate an hour before serving.
- Room for the fillingTwo cups of custard needs somewhere to go. Either mound the apples a little lower than usual, or expect to add less than the full pint. Add it in stages and stop when the level reaches the underside of the crust.
- Puff paste ornamentsSince the pie is already baked, these have to be baked separately on a sheet pan until crisp and browned, then set on the cooled pie. Cut them from bought all-butter puff pastry if you like; the recipe specifies nothing beyond "some ornaments of puff paste on the cover."
- "Any kind of firm fruit"Pears, quinces and firm plums all work; the point is fruit that holds its shape and does not flood the shell with juice, since there is no thickener beyond the custard itself.
- Yield and keepingThe recipe states no size or yield; a pint of custard suits a pie of about 9 inches. Because of the custard it is a same-day dessert — keep it refrigerated and eat it within a day, as the crust softens quickly.
History: Filling a baked pie through a hole in its lid is an old trick from the era before refrigeration, and the logic is practical: custard and fruit want different heats, so the fruit is baked hard and fast while the custard is cooked gently on the stove, and the two are married only at the end. Sweetened cream and similar sauces were introduced into cold pies the same way. The phrase "in the usual way" assumes every reader already had an apple pie by heart, and the note that any firm fruit may be "sent to table" the same way is the language of a household that still thought in terms of formal courses.