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Dessert

Very Fixe Cream Pie

A custard pie made with butter, eggs, sugar, salt, nutmeg, arrowroot, and boiling milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 159 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Very Fixe 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. In a bowl, combine butter, eggs, sugar, salt, nutmeg, and arrowroot.

  2. Pour in the boiling milk and stir until well mixed.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie dish and bake until set, like custard.

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. Nutmeg + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the filling structure and body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smooth, tender texture.
Arrowroot
Thickens the filling as it heats, helping it hold together when set.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding moisture and softness.

The step that matters

Bake until set, like custard. Egg proteins set as the filling heats, so pulling it too early leaves it runny, while overbaking makes it grainy and weeping. Check for a gentle wobble at the centre.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, nutmeg, 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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