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Dessert

Cream Pies

A sweet pie made with a butter-sugar batter and a thickened egg-milk-sugar filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Cream Pies

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 batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, alternating with the milk.

  6. Pour the batter into two pie pans and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the cream and assemble

  1. For the cream, whisk together the eggs, milk, sugar, and flour in a saucepan over medium heat until thickened.

  2. Once the cakes are cool, split them in half and fill with the cream.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cakes a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the batter and help thicken the cream filling.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cakes and thickens the cream filling as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and, creamed with butter, helps create a light, fluffy texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar to release gas, helping the cakes rise.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that works with baking soda to leaven the batter and stabilize its texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the cream until thickened. Egg and flour thickeners need enough heat to set the starch and proteins, but overheating or stirring too little can scorch or curdle the eggs, so the cream should be stirred constantly over medium heat until it thickens.

“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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