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 says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.
Make the custard
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Beat the sugar, corn starch, and egg yolks together.
Bring the milk to a boil, then stir in the egg mixture.
Add a pinch of salt and the butter, mixing well.
Bake the crust and filling
Prepare a pie crust and bake it until golden.
Fill the baked crust with the custard mixture and bake again until set.
Top with meringue
Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, adding 2 tablespoons of sugar.
Spread the meringue on top and brown in the hot oven.
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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Milk + corntop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base of the custard that sets when heated.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the custard and stabilizes the whipped egg whites in the meringue.
- Corn starch
- Thickens the custard as it heats, giving it a smooth, sliceable set.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the custard.
The step that matters
Bring the milk to a boil, then stir in the egg mixture. Adding hot milk to egg yolks too quickly can scramble them. Stirring as the mixture heats and cooking it until it thickens lets the starch gelatinize and the yolks set smoothly.
“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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