Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Pies

A dessert consisting of a milk-based custard topped with stiffened egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Cream Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix the yolks of 2 eggs with ½ cup corn starch and a little milk in a bowl.

  2. Stir this mixture into 1 quart of boiling milk.

  3. Sweeten and flavor the mixture to taste.

Top and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites with a little pulverized sugar until stiff.

  2. Spread the beaten egg whites over the tops of the pies.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the custard filling as it cooks.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, sliceable cream filling when heated.
Milk
Forms the body of the filling, providing moisture and a creamy base.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to form a light, soft topping for the pies.
Pulverized sugar
Sweetens the beaten egg whites and helps them hold their stiff peaks.

The step that matters

Stirring the starch mixture into boiling milk. Corn starch must be fully dispersed in cold liquid before it meets heat, or it clumps. Adding it to boiling milk while stirring keeps it smooth and lets it thicken evenly into a cream.

“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.

You might also like

Corn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesCorn CakesCorn Cakes22 recipesGreen Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding14 recipes