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Custard Pie

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription

This recipe’s ingredient list has no crust or pastry, so it bakes more like a fruit dish than a pastry pie.

By Women of the First Congregational Church (Marysville, Ohio) · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 81,222 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

  1. Mrs. IC. S. Long.

  2. For a' large pie^itake three eggs, one pint of milk and half tablespoon of corn-starch; flavor to suit the taste.

  3. LEMON PIE. Mrs. W. E. Scobey. One lemon grated, one cup sugar, the yolks of three eggs, small piece butter, three tablespoons milk, one teaspoon corn-starch ; beat all together, and bake in a rich .crust ; beat the whites very light, with a little sugar, aild place on the pie when done, then brown in the oven.

  4. LEMON PIE. Mrs. H. B. S. One tablespoon corn-starch, one cup boiling water, into which stir a lump of butter the size of a walnut, let it cool, add one cup sugar, grate the rind and juice of one lemon and add one egg- .cover with meringue paste, and brown in oven. • For paste, whip to a stiff froth the whites of ten eggs and one pound powdered sugar ; flavor with lemon, vanilla or rose- water ; allow three eggs to a pie ; spread over the top of the pie^

By Women of the First Congregational Church (Marysville, Ohio). 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Milk + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

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

  2. Milk + corntop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,953 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + walnuttop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together349 recipes

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

  4. Corn + buttertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,333 recipes

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

  5. Butter + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,819 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Flavor stand-ins for the walnut

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

  1. Lima beansabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Almondabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Pecansabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, corn, egg, lemon, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

More custard pie recipes

Apple 90Lemon 47Coconut 20Sweet Potato 13Chocolate 12Peach 12 See all 313 →

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