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Dessert

Cream Pie

A sweet pie with a baked batter and a boiled milk custard topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. 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 cake

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

  2. In a bowl, mix 1 cup sugar, 1 cup flour, 3 eggs, and 1 teaspoon cream of tartar.

  3. Dissolve ½ teaspoon baking soda in 1 tablespoon milk and add to the mixture.

  4. Pour the batter into Washington pie tins and bake until golden.

Make the cream and serve

  1. For the cream, combine ½ pint boiled milk, 2 eggs, 1 cup sugar, and ½ cup flour in a bowl.

  2. Beat the mixture well and stir it into the boiling milk.

  3. Flavor the cream to taste before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness to both the cake batter and the cream.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake and thickens the cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to help the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that reacts with baking soda to lighten the batter.
Boiled milk
Forms the base of the cream filling and gives it a smooth, soft texture.

The step that matters

Stir the beaten mixture into the boiling milk. Egg and flour mixture can curdle or form lumps if added carelessly to hot liquid. Stirring steadily while adding it helps the eggs and starch blend smoothly as the cream thickens.

“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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