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Dessert

Cream Pie

A custard pie made with milk, sugar, egg yolks, flour, nutmeg, wine, vanilla or lemon extract, baked in a pastry shell and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk, sugar, egg yolks, and flour.

  2. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes, seasoning with nutmeg, wine, and vanilla or lemon extract.

  3. Pour the mixture into a deep baked pastry shell.

Top and brown

  1. Make a meringue by beating egg whites with sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie and return it to the oven to brown.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the filling sets smoothly when boiled.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard filling.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stable meringue that browns on top.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the whipped egg white meringue.

The step that matters

Boiling the filling. The custard must boil long enough for the flour and egg yolks to thicken fully; undercooked filling stays runny and may not set when cooled.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, egg, flour, wine, vanilla):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Clovefits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg, flour, wine, vanilla. 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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