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Dessert

French Cream Pie

A pie with a custard-like cream filling made from eggs, milk, and sugar, topped with sugar and grated coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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French Cream Pie

Why it works: Vanilla and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,294 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

French 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.

Make the crust

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix with sugar, flour, baking powder, and cold water.

  3. Pour the batter into a pie dish and bake until golden.

Make the cream filling

  1. For the cream filling, boil the sweet milk.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix cornstarch with a little milk and add to the boiling milk.

  3. Stir in the eggs and sugar, cooking until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat and add butter and vanilla.

Assemble and finish

  1. Once the pie is cool, split it and fill with the cream mixture.

  2. Sprinkle the top with sugar and grated coconut.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Vanilla + coconuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,294 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and thicken the cream filling as they cook.
Flour
Provides the structure of the baked pie base.
Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling milk into a smooth, sliceable cream.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky texture to the cream filling.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream filling.

The step that matters

Adding the cornstarch mixture to the boiling milk. Cornstarch must be mixed with a little cold liquid first so it does not clump, then added to hot milk and cooked until thickened. Cooking it fully lets the starch gelatinize, which sets the cream so it holds when the pie is split and filled.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Coconutthe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Strawberryfits about as well

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