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Dessert

Jam Pie

A pie filled with jam and a buttery custard, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Jam Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the well-beaten egg yolks.

  3. Gradually stir in the flour and milk until smooth.

  4. Add the jam mixture and cook in a double boiler until thick.

Assemble and bake

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

  2. Cover with meringue made from the well-beaten egg whites and 2 tablespoons of sugar.

  3. Brown in the oven.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling and whites form the meringue topping.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to add richness and a tender texture to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the meringue.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it sets smoothly when cooked.
Jam
Provides the main fruit flavour and sweetness of the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the filling in a double boiler until thick. Gentle, indirect heat lets the flour and egg yolks thicken the filling slowly. Overheating can curdle the eggs or leave the flour tasting raw, so the filling should be stirred and watched closely until it coats a spoon.

“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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