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Dessert

Mock Cream Pie

A pie filled with a smooth, lemon-flavored custard made from eggs, flour, and boiling milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mock Cream Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the mock cream

  1. Beat the eggs well in a bowl.

  2. Add the flour and mix until smooth, then stir the mixture into the boiling milk.

  3. Add salt and sugar to taste, and flavor with essence of lemon.

  4. Stir continuously while boiling until smooth.

Bake and serve

  1. Line pie plates with puff pastry and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  2. Once baked, fill the crusts with the mock cream.

  3. Sprinkle powdered sugar on top and return to the oven to brown.

  4. Bake until the top is a fine color.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk 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
Thicken the milk mixture as they set and give the cream its rich body.
Flour
Thickens the cream by swelling with heat, giving it a smooth, spreadable texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream, which thickens as it cooks.
Puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky pie crust that holds the cream.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves on top of the pie and caramelizes lightly to brown the surface.

The step that matters

Stir continuously while boiling until smooth. Egg and flour mixtures can scorch on the bottom or form lumps if left unattended. Constant stirring keeps heat even and starch and egg proteins blended into a smooth, thick cream.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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