Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Pies

A baked dessert made from flour, baking soda, milk, eggs, and optional lemon or chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,128 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Cream Pies

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.

Prepare

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour and baking soda.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, bring the milk to a boil.

  2. Stir in the eggs.

  3. Cook for a few minutes.

  4. Add flavoring with lemon or chocolate if desired.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into pie crusts.

  2. Bake until set.

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 + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Provides starch that thickens the filling and gives it body as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and its proteins help the filling set as it heats.
Eggs
Their proteins set when heated, firming the filling into a sliceable custard.

The step that matters

Cooking the eggs into the hot milk. Egg proteins set with heat, so if the mixture gets too hot or the eggs are added too quickly, they can curdle into lumps. Stirring steadily and keeping the heat moderate helps the filling stay smooth and evenly set.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, chocolate. 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.

More cream pie recipes

Lemon 54Boston 44Sour 38Coconut 24Whipped 20Orange 18 See all 378 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesChocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes