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Cream Pie a LA Meringue

A custard pie topped with a baked meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Cream Pie a LA Meringue

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.

Make the filling

  1. Bring 2 quarts of milk to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, beat together 8 egg yolks, 1 ½ cups sugar, and 4 ounces corn starch.

  3. Stir the mixture into the boiling milk and continue stirring until it thickens.

  4. Fill the pie crusts with the thickened mixture and bake without a top crust.

Top and brown

  1. Make a meringue by beating 8 egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the meringue over the tops of the pies and dust with powdered sugar.

  3. Brown the meringue in a 350°F (175°C) 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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the filling as they set with heat.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps balance the starch.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam that forms the meringue topping.

The step that matters

Stirring the mixture into the boiling milk. Starch needs to reach a boil and be stirred constantly to thicken smoothly. Stopping early or stirring poorly can leave the filling thin or lumpy.

“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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