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Dessert

Cream Pies

A pie with a custard filling made from milk, eggs, sugar, and cornstarch, baked in a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cream Pies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the crust

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and add the sugar.

  4. Sift the flour with the baking soda and cream of tartar.

  5. Add the sifted flour mixture to the yolk mixture.

  6. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  7. Pour the batter into four pie tins.

  8. Bake until golden.

Make the custard

  1. Cook the milk in a double boiler for the custard.

  2. Mix the cornstarch with a little milk.

  3. Add the cornstarch mixture to the boiling milk.

  4. Beat the eggs and sugar.

  5. Stir the mixture into the milk.

  6. Flavor the custard to taste.

  7. Let the custard cool.

Assemble

  1. Spread the cooled custard between two layers of pie crust.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Whites trap air for lift, and yolks add richness and structure to the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the baked crust layers together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the batter and custard brown and set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so the baking soda reacts and helps keep the whites stable.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk so the custard sets into a smooth, spreadable filling.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whites intact; stirring or deflating them makes the crust dense and less light.

“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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