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Dessert

Cream Pie

A custard pie made with egg yolks, cornstarch, sugar, butter, sweet milk, topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 filling

  1. In a saucepan, boil the sweet milk.

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, cornstarch, sugar, and butter.

  3. Stir the mixture into the boiling milk until thickened.

  4. Add lemon flavor or coconut if desired.

Top and bake

  1. Whip the egg whites with powdered sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the whipped egg whites over the pie filling.

  3. Brown the pie in a 350°F (175°C) 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Walnut + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness and colour to the filling.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth, sliceable custard as it cooks.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks to form the airy topping that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped egg white topping.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the filling, which thickens when starch is added.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture into the boiling milk until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens fully when heated, and the yolks can scramble if the mixture is added too cold or stirred poorly. Constant stirring keeps the custard smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, butter, walnut, milk):

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

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