Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Pie

A puff pastry shell filled with a cream mixture of yolks, butter, sugar, corn starch, vanilla, and cream, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream Pie

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 filling

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

  2. In a bowl, stir together the butter and sugar.

  3. Beat the corn starch into the egg yolks until smooth.

  4. Combine the butter-sugar mixture with the egg yolks.

  5. Add vanilla flavoring.

  6. Gradually stir in the cream.

  7. Pour the mixture into a puff pastry shell.

Bake and top with meringue

  1. Bake the pie for 30 minutes.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Gradually add the powdered sugar to the whipped egg whites to make meringue.

  4. Spread the meringue over the pie.

  5. Lightly brown the meringue in the oven.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

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 enrich its texture as they set.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the custard filling.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard so it sets smoothly when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to form the airy, stable meringue topping.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the filling.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the cream. Adding liquid slowly to the egg yolks and starch keeps the mixture smooth and prevents lumps, so the custard sets evenly when baked.

“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.

More cream pie recipes

Lemon 54Boston 44Sour 38Coconut 24Whipped 20Orange 18 See all 378 →

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesCorn CakesCorn Cakes22 recipes