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 ↓
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.
Prepare the crust and custard
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C) and bake the pie crust.
Scald 1½ cups of milk with the butter and salt in a saucepan.
In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with the corn-starch, remaining ½ cup of milk, and lemon extract.
Combine the egg yolk mixture with the scalded milk, then pour it into the baked crust.
Bake until set.
Top and brown
Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, adding a little sugar, then spread over the pie.
Return the pie to the oven and brown the meringue slightly.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Corn + walnuttop 9% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together349 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,149 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + corntop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,927 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Yolks thicken the custard and whites whip into the meringue topping.
- Corn-starch
- Starch thickens the milk mixture into a sliceable, smooth custard as it heats.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving it body and creaminess.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the meringue and helps the whites hold a stable, glossy structure.
The step that matters
Cooking the custard until set. Starch thickens only when the custard reaches a boil, and under-cooked starch leaves it runny. Egg yolks also need enough heat to set. Baking until set ensures the filling firms before the meringue goes on.
Swap the walnut
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, corn, butter, sugar, lemon):
- Almondfits better
- Walnutthe original
- Lima beansfits about as well
- Beansfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, corn, butter, sugar, lemon. 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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