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Dessert

Cream Pies

A baked jelly cake base topped with a thickened milk and egg yolk cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Pies

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, combine 2 cups of flour, 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar, and ½ teaspoon of baking soda dissolved in 2 tablespoons of boiling water.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold the egg whites into the flour mixture gently.

  4. Divide the batter into 4 jelly cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the cream

  1. For the cream, boil 1 pint of milk in a double boiler.

  2. In a small bowl, mix ¼ cup of flour or 1 tablespoon of cornstarch with a little milk until smooth.

  3. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling milk along with 2 egg yolks and ¼ cup of sugar. Cook until thickened, then add vanilla extract to taste.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla 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

Eggs
Whipped whites give the cake its light, airy structure and rise.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the cake's structure and body.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites so they hold their peaks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to help the cake rise.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream and add richness to the filling.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture to the boiling milk. Starch must be fully smoothed in cold or warm milk first, or it clumps. Stirring it into hot milk while cooking lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the cream without lumps.

“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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