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Dessert

Cream Pie

A baked pie with a sweet cream filling made from butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the crust

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the eggs and milk, mixing well.

  4. Gradually stir in the flour and baking powder.

  5. Divide the batter between two pie tins and bake until golden.

Make the cream

  1. In a saucepan, boil the milk with sugar and egg yolks.

  2. Mix the reserved milk with flour and add to the boiling mixture.

  3. Cook for three minutes, then cool and flavor with lemon or vanilla.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the cream between the baked pie crusts after cutting them apart.

  2. Serve with whipped 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 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).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the crust a tender texture.
Eggs
Provide structure and binding to the batter as it sets in the oven.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream and add richness and smoothness to the filling.
Flour
Forms the structure of the crust and thickens the cream filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the crust and cream and helps the crust brown.
Baking powder
Produces gas in the batter so the crust rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Cook the cream until thickened. Flour and egg yolks thicken only when the mixture boils and is cooked for long enough. Undercooked cream stays thin and may taste of raw flour, while steady stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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