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Dessert

Cream Filling for Pie

A custard-like filling made from milk, egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch, and water, cooled and topped with stiffened egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cream Filling for Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix the milk, egg yolks, sugar, and cornstarch dissolved in cold water in a bowl.

  2. Cook the mixture over low heat until it thickens, then let it cool.

Assemble and top

  1. Pour the cooled filling into a baked pie crust.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff, adding a little sugar, and spread them over the filling.

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

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

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

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into a custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the filling as they set with gentle heat.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the whipped egg white topping.
Cornstarch
Swells in heated liquid to thicken the filling into a smooth, sliceable custard.
Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff foam that forms the light topping over the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture over low heat until it thickens. Cornstarch must heat until it swells and thickens, but high heat can scorch the milk or scramble the egg yolks. Gentle, steady heat with constant stirring gives a smooth, evenly thickened filling.

“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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