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Custard Pie

Custard pie made with milk, cornstarch, sugar, egg, nutmeg, butter, and pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Custard Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Add the cornstarch and sugar.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes.

  4. Let it cool.

  5. Add the beaten egg, nutmeg, and butter.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line pie plates with the crust.

  2. Pour in the custard.

  3. Bake.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Milk
Forms the custard base and supplies the liquid that sets.
Egg
Sets as it heats, giving the custard its firm body.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk as it boils, giving the custard a smooth body.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and softens its set.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Let the custard cool before adding the egg. Egg proteins scramble when they meet very hot liquid. Letting the boiled custard cool first lets the beaten egg blend in smoothly and keeps the filling silky rather than grainy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk, butter. 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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