The Collaborative International Dictionary
Custard \Cus"tard\ (k[u^]s"t[~e]rd), n. [Prob. the same word as OE. crustade, crustate, a pie made with a crust, fr. L. crustatus covered with a crust, p. p. of crustare, fr. crusta crust; cf. OF. croustade pasty, It. crostata, or F. coutarde. See Crust, and cf. Crustated.] A mixture of milk and eggs, sweetened, and baked or boiled.
Custard apple (Bot.), a low tree or shrub of tropical America, including several species of Anona ( Anona squamosa, Anona reticulata, etc.), having a roundish or ovate fruit the size of a small orange, containing a soft, yellowish, edible pulp.
Custard coffin, pastry, or crust, which covers or coffins a
custard [Obs.]
--Shak.
Wiktionary
n. 1 The soursop (fruit and tree) 2 The sugar apple, ''Annona squamosa'', a related fruit.
WordNet
n. any of several tropical American trees bearing fruit with soft edible pulp [syn: custard apple tree]
the fruit of any of several tropical American trees of the genus Annona having soft edible pulp
Wikipedia
Custard apple is a common name for a fruit, and the tree which bears it, Annona reticulata
Custard apple may also refer to similar fruits produced by related trees:
-
Annonaceae, the soursop family.
- Asimina triloba, the "pawpaw", a deciduous tree, ranging from southern Ontario to Texas and Florida, that bears the largest edible fruit native to the United States or Canada.
- Annona cherimola, a tree and fruit also called cherimoya.
- Annona squamosa, a tree and fruit also called sugar apple or sweetsop
- Annona senegalensis, a tree and fruit called wild custard-apple
- Casimiroa edulis, also called white sapote, a fruit related to the citrus.
Usage examples of "custard apple".
Noteworthy among these is the custard apple: a short, fruit-bearing tree of no particular beauty, yet a name I heard repeated like a mantra throughout Rishi Valley.
Give it drink from eggshells of the throstle thrush filled with juice of the custard apple, in which are three pinches of shredded rhinoceros horn.
In the wide delta there had been fields of sugar cane, banana palms, custard apple orchards and waving clumps of bamboo, later on as they climbed into the campo there were steep terraces of olive trees, oranges and lemons, then on the rocky mesas almond trees, their leaves a beautiful spring green and the fruit hanging half formed.