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Dessert

Cream Pie

A lemon-flavored cream pie made with a pastry crust, egg yolk custard, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix powdered sugar, flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  3. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and add the grated lemon rind.

  5. Combine the dry ingredients with the egg yolk mixture.

  6. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  7. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake for 15-20 minutes.

Make the cream

  1. For the cream, heat the milk in a double boiler until scalding hot.

  2. Stir in sugar and a pinch of salt until dissolved.

  3. Thicken the mixture by stirring continuously, then let it cool.

  4. Add vanilla extract to the cooled cream and mix well.

  5. Spread the cream between the baked crusts.

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. Sugar + creamtop 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
Whites trapped by beating give the batter lift and an airy, light structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the baked body of the pie.
Milk
Forms the base of the cream, which thickens when heated and stirred.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and helps it thicken smoothly when dissolved in the hot milk.
Cream of tartar
Stabilises the beaten egg whites and works with baking soda to help the batter rise.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Stiff whites hold air that gives the batter its lift. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, leaving a dense, flat result.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, cream, egg, milk, 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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