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Dessert

Dedham Ceeam Pie

A baked pie crust filled with a lemon custard and topped with frosting made from egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Ithaca (N.Y.) First Baptist Church. Ladies Union · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Dedham Ceeam Pie

2 pies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil as for custard: one quart of milk, the yolks of 3 eggs, 1 cup of sugar, and 1 large lemon with pulp and rind grated.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake the crust.

  2. Fill the baked crust with the custard.

  3. Use the whites of the eggs for frosting.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

845Calories
28 gProtein
26 gFat
124 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 7 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Pienot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Ithaca (N.Y.) First Baptist Church. Ladies Union. 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. See the original page.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 that sets into the custard.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard, and whites are used for the frosting.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the custard.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma from the pulp and grated rind.

The step that matters

Boiling the custard. Egg yolks thicken the milk as they heat, but they can curdle or turn grainy if the mixture gets too hot or boils too hard. Stir steadily and watch the custard closely as it thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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