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Dessert

Cream Pie

A custard pie made with cream, sugar, egg whites, nutmeg, and optional flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

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 filling

  1. Pour 1 pint of cream into a bowl and add 1½ cups of sugar. Let it stand.

  2. Beat the whites of 3 eggs until stiff peaks form.

  3. Add the beaten whites to the cream mixture and beat thoroughly.

  4. Grate a little nutmeg over the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie dish.

  2. Bake without an upper crust at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of sifted flour to the mixture before baking.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  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).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Whites set into a foam and then coagulate, giving the pie its light, firm structure.
Cream
Supplies fat and moisture, giving the filling its rich, smooth texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilise the beaten whites.
Flour
Optional; helps thicken the filling and add structure as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins set as the filling heats. Underbaking leaves it runny, while overbaking tightens the proteins too far, so the custard weeps liquid and turns grainy.

“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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