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Dessert

Cream Pies

A sweet baked batter with a creamy filling made from milk, eggs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cream Pies

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 cake batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix 2 cups of white sugar, 2 cups of all-purpose flour, and 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  4. Dissolve ½ teaspoon of baking soda in 2 tablespoons of boiling water. Add the dissolved baking soda to the flour mixture.

  5. Fold in the egg whites gently.

  6. Divide the batter into 4 jelly cake pans.

  7. Bake the batter until golden.

Make the cream filling

  1. For the cream, boil 1 pint of milk in a double boiler.

  2. In a small bowl, mix ⅓ cup of all-purpose flour or 1 tablespoon of cornstarch with a little milk until smooth.

  3. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling milk.

  4. Add 2 egg yolks, ⅓ cup of sugar, and a little vanilla extract.

  5. Stir until thickened.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Whipped whites trap air, giving the cake its light, airy structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the cake's crumb structure.
White sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep its crumb tender and moist.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, stabilizing the whipped egg whites and helping the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk custard filling when heated with liquid.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites gently. Deflating the whipped whites by overmixing loses the trapped air that gives the cake its rise, so the batter should be folded just until combined.

“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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