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Dessert

Mock Cream Pie

A custard pie made with milk, eggs, sugar, flour, butter, and coconut topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Mock Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk, eggs, sugar, flour, and butter.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until it thickens.

Assemble and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into a pre-baked pie crust.

  2. Grate coconut over the top to finish.

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

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

  2. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  3. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Egg proteins set as the filling heats, giving it body and structure.
Flour
Starch thickens with heat, helping the filling become firm enough to slice.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the thickened custard is built on.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the milk and butter.
Butter
Adds fat, giving the filling a richer flavour and smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stirring constantly while the filling cooks. Flour starch and egg proteins thicken the mixture as it heats, but they can scorch on the base of the pan or curdle if left unstirred. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly, so the filling thickens smoothly.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

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