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Dessert

Custard Pie

A custard pie made with milk, eggs, sugar, and vanilla or nutmeg, baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Custard Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs, salt, and sugar until light.

  3. If making cream pie, wet the corn starch with a little cold milk and add the yolks.

  4. Stir the egg mixture into the scalding milk.

  5. Flavor with Strong's Essence Vanilla or nutmeg or lemon essence.

  6. Set aside to cool.

Bake the crust and fill

  1. Line a pie plate with the pie crust and bake until golden.

  2. Fill the crust with the custard mixture.

Frost and bake

  1. For frosting, beat the egg whites until dry, then gradually add 2 tablespoons of sugar.

  2. Spread the frosting on top of the pie and bake until lightly browned.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Vanilla + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, setting into a soft, creamy filling when heated.
Eggs
Set the custard through protein coagulation, giving it structure as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the egg whites hold a stable, glossy frosting.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard when making a cream pie, giving a smoother, firmer texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam for the topping, which browns lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture into the scalding milk. Adding the eggs to very hot milk can scramble them. Stirring steadily while pouring in the mixture helps the eggs blend and thicken the custard evenly rather than curdling.

“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.

More custard pie recipes

Apple 90Lemon 47Coconut 20Sweet Potato 13Chocolate 12Peach 12 See all 313 →

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