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Dessert

French Cream Pie

A custard‑filled cake made with sugar, eggs, flour, milk, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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French Cream Pie

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 ↓

French 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 cake

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

  2. Beat the egg yolks thoroughly, then add sugar, hot water, flour, and baking powder.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites and any desired flavoring.

  4. Pour the mixture into a jelly pan and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, boil the milk.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix sugar, egg, and butter until well combined.

  3. Dissolve cornstarch in a little milk and add to the mixture.

  4. Cook the filling until thick, then flavor it and let it cool.

Assemble

  1. Once cool, split the cake through the center.

  2. Spread the filling between the split sections of the cake.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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).

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 yolks and whites build the cake's structure and give it lift and richness.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once its proteins set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Cornstarch
Thickens the filling as it cooks, giving it a smooth, spreadable body.
Milk
Forms the base of the filling, adding richness and body.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until thick. Cornstarch only thickens fully once the mixture reaches a boil and is stirred while cooking. Stopping early leaves a runny filling that will not hold between the cake layers.

“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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