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Dessert

Grandma Burnett's Cream Pie

A custard-like pie made with sugar, flour, heavy cream, water, nutmeg, and a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Grandma Burnett's 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).

  2. Line a large pie tin with the pie crust.

  3. In a bowl, mix the sugar and flour with your fingers or a spoon.

Make the filling

  1. In a separate cup, combine the heavy cream and water until half full. Add nutmeg to the cream mixture.

  2. Pour the cream mixture into the pie crust.

Bake

  1. 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 + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling set smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the filling and gives it structure as it bakes.
Heavy cream
Provides fat and richness, giving the filling a smooth, tender texture.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Baking until set means the cream mixture has thickened and firmed through. Underbaking leaves a runny filling, while overbaking can cause the custard to weep or crack.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Jalapenofits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, cream. 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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