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Dessert

Roxbury Patent Cream Pie

A custard pie made with sugar, flour, eggs, lemon, and boiled milk, baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roxbury Patent 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

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

Make the filling

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs with the sugar until well combined.

  2. Add the beaten egg whites to the yolk mixture along with the flour.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the boiling milk with ½ cup sugar and ½ cup flour.

  4. Beat in 2 eggs and the juice of the lemon, then let it boil for 2-3 minutes.

  5. Set the mixture aside to cool.

Bake

  1. Pour the cooled mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 and thicken the filling as their proteins firm up with heat, giving structure.
Flour
Thickens the filling as its starch swells and gels when heated with liquid.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and richness, and thickens with the starch when boiled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the set texture of the custard.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright flavor that balances the sweetness of the filling.

The step that matters

Boiling after adding the eggs and lemon juice. Eggs can curdle or scramble if they are added too quickly or overheated. Boiling for the stated time lets the flour starch fully thicken the filling, so it sets properly when baked.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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