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Dessert

Cream Pie

A custard pie topped with meringue, made with corn starch, milk, eggs, sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. 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. Dissolve the corn starch in boiling water.

  2. Cook until thickened.

  3. Add the milk and egg yolks.

  4. Sweeten and flavor with vanilla or other extracts.

  5. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  6. Let it cool slightly.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Fold the sugar into the beaten egg whites.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pie.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until lightly browned.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Corn starch
Thickens the filling as it cooks, giving it a smooth, sliceable body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard filling, adding richness and moisture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the custard as it cooks and thickens.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the meringue topping, adding lightness and structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Cook until thickened. Corn starch needs to reach a boil in the liquid to fully thicken; undercooked starch leaves the filling thin and runny, so it may not set when cooled.

“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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