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Dessert

Boston Cream Pie

A custard-filled pie with a sweet crust, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Boston Cream Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs, then add sugar and flour; mix well.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk, add butter, and stir until thickened.

  4. Flavor with vanilla or lemon.

Make and bake the crust

  1. For the crust, beat the eggs separately, then mix with sugar, flour, baking powder, and milk or water.

  2. Divide the batter in half and pour into two medium-sized pie tins.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden brown.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once cooled, split each cake in half and spread half the cream between the layers.

  2. Serve cold, flavoring the cake as desired.

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 + 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. Milk + flourtop 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
Bind the batter and thicken the custard as they set with heat.
Flour
Provides structure to the cake and helps thicken the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown while baking.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the cream.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Milk
Forms the base of the cream and adds moisture to the cake batter.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the boiling milk. Eggs can scramble if added too fast or without stirring. Adding them gradually while stirring keeps the custard smooth, and it thickens as the egg proteins set with heat.

“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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