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Dessert

Cream Pie

A custard pie with a baked crust and frosted topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream filling

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Wet the corn starch with a little cold milk.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and sugar until light and fluffy.

  4. Stir the corn starch mixture and the egg mixture into the scalding milk.

  5. Flavor the mixture with lemon or vanilla.

  6. Set the mixture aside to cool.

Bake the crust

  1. Line a pie plate with pie crust.

  2. Bake the crust until golden.

  3. Fill the baked crust with the cream mixture.

Make the frosting and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add 2 tablespoons of sugar to the beaten egg whites.

  3. Spread the frosting over the cream.

  4. Bake until lightly browned.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the body of the cream filling, giving it liquid and richness as it thickens.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the filling a smooth, sliceable set.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the filling as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the beaten egg whites hold their structure.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the frosting and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir the corn starch mixture and the egg mixture into the scalding milk. Starch thickens only when heated, and the egg yolks can scramble if the mixture gets too hot too fast. Adding the mixtures gradually while stirring keeps the filling smooth.

“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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