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Dessert

Blueberry Cream Pie

A custard pie filled with blueberries and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Blueberry Cream Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Add sugar, blueberries, lemon juice, flour, salt, and thick cream; mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pie plate lined with pastry.

Top and bake

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add powdered sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie filling.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until the meringue is delicately brown.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and enrich it, helping it set as it bakes.
Blueberries
Provide the main fruit flavor and juice that moistens the filling.
Flour
Stabilizes the filling so it holds its shape when sliced.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the filling.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam that forms the meringue topping and browns in the oven.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the whipped whites, stabilizing the meringue and sweetening it.

The step that matters

Baking the meringue until just delicately brown. Meringue needs gentle heat to set and brown without weeping or toughening. Slow oven heat dries the surface evenly, and overbaking can make it shrink, weep, or turn leathery.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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