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Dessert

Custard Pie

A baked custard pie made from milk, eggs, sugar, salt and lemon or vanilla in a pastry-lined plate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Clarke, Mary Lamson. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 28 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 ↓

Custard Pie

two pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Line the plate as for squash.

  2. Heat one pint of milk.

  3. Rub one teaspoonful flour smooth with one-half cup cold milk.

Make the custard

  1. Add the flour mixture to the boiling milk and cook five minutes.

  2. Pour on to three beaten eggs, one-half cup of sugar, one saltspoonful salt and flavor to taste, one-half teaspoonful lemon or one teaspoonful vanilla.

  3. Strain hot into a deep plate.

Bake

  1. Bake slowly, never letting it boil.

  2. It is done when a knife blade makes a clean cut.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

809Calories
29 gProtein
16 gFat
135 gCarbs

Counts 7 of 9 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Cracker5 saltine crackers (15g)66
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0
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 Clarke, Mary Lamson. [from old catalog]. 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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Milk and flour 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
Set the custard into a firm, sliceable structure as they cook.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and creamy body of the custard.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the custard holds its body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the set custard's flavor.

The step that matters

Bake slowly, never letting it boil. Egg proteins set gently at moderate heat. If the custard boils or bakes too hot, it can curdle, turn grainy, or weep liquid, so the texture is lost.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More custard pie recipes

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

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