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Dessert

Cream Pie

A baked pie with a batter of egg, sugar, butter, milk, flour, baking powder, lemon flavoring, and a sweet milk filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 cakes

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg, sugar, butter, milk, flour, baking powder, and lemon flavoring until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into jelly tins with straight rims and bake until golden brown.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, heat the sweet milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, flour, and sugar until smooth.

  3. Once the milk boils, stir in the egg mixture and cook until thick.

  4. Remove from heat and add a small piece of butter and vanilla flavoring.

Assemble and serve

  1. Let the cakes cool, then slice each in half and fill with the cream filling.

  2. Before serving, sift fine sugar on top.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Walnut + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
Bind the batter and thicken the filling as they set with heat.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake and filling together.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the cake and a silky finish to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and filling and helps the cake brown.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and turns light.
Sweet milk
Forms the base of the custard filling, which thickens when heated with the eggs.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard filling. Once the egg mixture goes into the boiling milk, it must be stirred constantly and cooked only until thick. Eggs left too long on the heat can curdle and turn grainy, while undercooked starch and egg leave the filling runny.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, walnut, milk, flour, vanilla. 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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