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Dessert

Cream Pie

A layered cake with a sweet cream filling made from eggs, sugar, corn starch, milk, vanilla, butter, sour cream, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the custard

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat together 2 eggs, 1 cup sugar, and 2 tablespoons corn starch.

  3. In a saucepan, boil 1 pint milk and season with 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Once boiling, stir in the egg mixture continuously until it thickens. Before removing from heat, stir in 1 tablespoon butter.

Make and bake the cake

  1. In another bowl, mix 3 eggs, 1 cup sugar, ¼ teaspoon baking soda, ½ cup sour cream, and 1 teaspoon cream of tartar. Gradually add 1½ cups flour to the mixture.

  2. Pour the batter into jelly cake pans and bake until golden.

Assemble

  1. Once cooled, slice the cake and layer it with the prepared cream.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Bind the custard and add structure and richness to the cake batter.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable cream filling.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, tenderising the cake crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar and sour cream to help the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, reacting with baking soda to produce lift.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together.

The step that matters

Stirring the custard as it thickens. Cornstarch must be stirred constantly while the milk boils; if it sits still, it can scorch on the pan bottom and form lumps before the starch swells evenly, leaving a grainy, unevenly thickened cream.

“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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