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Dessert

Corn-starch Pie

A pie made with corn starch thickened peanut milk, flavored with rose water or vanilla, optionally with egg, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and peanut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 346 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Corn-starch Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Dissolve the corn starch in a little of the peanut milk.

  2. Heat the remaining peanut milk until boiling.

  3. Add the dissolved corn starch and flavoring to the boiling milk.

  4. Sweeten to taste and stir well.

  5. If desired, add an egg and mix thoroughly.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  2. Bake until the crust is cooked through.

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. Corn + peanuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together346 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Peanut + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,048 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Corn + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, sliceable custard-like filling as it heats.
Peanut milk
Forms the liquid base of the filling and carries its flavor.
Egg
Adds richness and helps the filling set when baked, if used.

The step that matters

Add the dissolved corn starch to the boiling milk. Corn starch must be fully dispersed in cool liquid first, then added to boiling milk while stirring, so it thickens evenly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, milk, rose, egg. 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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