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Dessert

Cream Pie

A sweet pie with a baked batter crust and a lemon-flavored custard filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

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. Beat the eggs and sugar until well combined.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in a little hot water, then add it to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the cream of tartar.

  5. Stir in the sifted flour until smooth.

  6. Pour the batter into flat pie tins.

  7. Bake until golden.

Make the cream filling

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Mix the sugar, flour, and eggs in a separate bowl.

  3. Gradually stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk.

  4. Cook until thickened.

  5. Remove from heat and cool.

  6. Flavor the cream with lemon extract.

Assemble

  1. Spread the cooled cream between the baked pie crusts.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and thicken the cream as they set with heat.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to lift the batter so the crusts rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, helping the baking soda react and stabilizing the structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides structure to the crusts and thickens the cream filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream filling, giving it richness and body.
Sugar
Sweetens the crust and cream, and tenderizes the batter.

The step that matters

Gradually stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk. Adding the egg mixture slowly, while stirring, keeps the eggs from scrambling in the hot milk and lets the cream thicken smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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