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Dessert

Pastry Cream for Washington Pie

A thickened milk or water custard with sugar, cornstarch, egg yolks, and butter used as filling for Washington pie.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Pastry Cream for Washington Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pastry cream

  1. In a saucepan, boil 1 pint of milk or water with 5 tablespoons of sugar.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of cornstarch and the yolks of 5 eggs.

  3. Stir until thickened.

Fill the cake

  1. When partly cool, spread the mixture on the cake.

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

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

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk or water
Forms the liquid base that the starch and egg yolks thicken into a smooth cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the egg yolks.
Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid into a spreadable cream as it heats.
Egg yolks
Add richness and further thicken the cream as their proteins set with heat.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer flavor and smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil while being stirred. Undercooked starch leaves the cream thin and tasting raw, while overheated egg yolks can scramble and turn grainy.

“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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