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Dessert

Cream Pie

A custard filling made from milk, eggs, sugar, and flour, served in a buttered flour crust.

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 custard

  1. Mix sugar and flour in a double boiler.

  2. Slowly add the mixture to hot milk while stirring constantly.

  3. Beat the egg yolks.

  4. Add the beaten yolks to the mixture once it cools, along with the vanilla.

Make the meringue and crust

  1. Use the egg whites to make meringue.

  2. For the crust, mix 1 cup flour with 1 tablespoon butter and enough water to form a dough.

  3. Bake the crust separately.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that thickens into the filling.
Eggs
Egg yolks thicken and enrich the custard, while whites form the meringue.
Flour
Starch thickens the custard so it holds its shape when sliced.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilise the meringue.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness to the pastry crust.

The step that matters

Adding the mixture to hot milk. Pouring slowly while stirring constantly keeps the starch dispersed so the custard thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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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