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Dessert

Flour Pie

A custard pie made with flour, milk, eggs, lemon, and sugar, baked with a crust and topped with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Flour Pie

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, stir the sifted flour into the boiling milk.

  2. Add the yolks of three eggs and let it boil for a few minutes.

  3. Sweeten the mixture and add a piece of lemon.

  4. Bake the pie crusts until golden.

  5. Fill the baked crusts with the custard mixture.

  6. Beat the egg whites until stiff, sweeten, and spread over the tops.

  7. Brown the tops slightly in the oven.

  8. Before stirring in the flour, wet it with a little cold milk.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + lemontop 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

Flour
Starch thickens the hot milk into a set, sliceable custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the yolks enrich.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the custard, adding richness and body.
Egg whites
Beaten stiff, they trap air to form a light topping that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the lemon and the custard.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma to the custard.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the boiling milk. Dry starch clumps when it hits hot liquid, leaving lumps. Wetting the flour with a little cold milk first lets the granules disperse, so the custard thickens smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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