Skip to main content
Dessert

Ceeam Pie

A baked dessert made with milk, corn starch, eggs, sugar, butter, lemon juice, flour, baking powder, and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Ceeam Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cream filling

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix corn starch with a little milk and add the eggs.

  3. Once the milk boils, slowly stir in the corn starch mixture, sugar, and butter.

  4. Add lemon juice and mix well.

Make the cakes

  1. In another bowl, combine eggs, sugar, flour, and baking powder.

  2. Add cold water and mix until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into two pie pans and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

Assemble

  1. Split the cakes while hot and spread the cream filling between them.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Set the cream filling and add richness and structure to the cakes.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable cream filling.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich texture and smooth mouthfeel in the filling.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake batter together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cakes rise and turn light.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and cakes and helps them brown as they bake.

The step that matters

Stir the cornstarch mixture into the boiling milk slowly. Cornstarch only thickens fully when heated to a boil while being stirred. Adding it slowly and stirring constantly prevents lumps and keeps the cream smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

More cream pie recipes

Lemon 54Boston 44Sour 38Coconut 24Whipped 20Orange 18 See all 378 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipes