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Dessert

Cream Peach Pie

A peach pie filled with a thickened milk and egg white cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and milk work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 781 recipes. Both carry phellandrene, which smells minty. The science ↓

Cream Peach Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Prepare the peach pie crust as directed.

  2. Lightly butter the lower crust at the point of contact with the upper crust.

  3. Bake the pie until done.

Make the cream

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk.

  2. Whip the egg whites and stir them into the heated milk.

  3. Add the sugar and cornstarch mixed with a little milk.

  4. Boil for three minutes until thickened.

  5. Let the cream cool before pouring it into the hot pie.

Finish and serve

  1. Replace the crust and allow the pie to cool 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. Peach + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  2. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Rich milk
Provides the liquid base and richness for the cream filling.
Egg whites
Whipped whites add lightness and help set the cream as it cooks.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture as it boils, giving the cream its body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the cream filling.

The step that matters

Boil for three minutes until thickened. Cornstarch needs to reach a full boil to thicken fully. Stopping early leaves the cream thin and runny, and it may not set properly once cooled.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar. 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.

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