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Dessert

Caramel Pie

A custard pie with caramelized sugar and butter, baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Caramel 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.

Make the filling

  1. Heat the sweet milk and sugar in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. Dissolve the cornstarch in a little cold milk and add it to the boiling mixture.

  3. Mix the egg yolks with the moistened cornstarch and stir into the saucepan.

  4. Add the butter, vanilla, and burnt sugar syrup, stirring until combined.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the filling into the baked pie crust.

  2. Top with meringue.

  3. Brown in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Vanilla + syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the filling that the other ingredients thicken and flavour.
Cornstarch
Thickens the filling as it heats, giving it a sliceable, creamy body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the filling, giving it a smooth, custard-like texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps balance the flavour of the burnt sugar syrup.
Burnt sugar syrup
Gives the filling its caramel flavour and deep colour.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother mouthfeel and a rounder flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the yolks into the hot filling. Egg yolks can scramble and turn grainy if they meet very hot liquid without being thinned first. Mixing them with cold-milk cornstarch and stirring steadily keeps the filling smooth while the starch thickens it.

“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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