Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Pie

A sweet pie made with eggs, sugar, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, milk, and lemon essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 pie crusts

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar.

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

  4. Stir in the cream of tartar and sifted flour until combined.

  5. Pour the batter into flat pie tins and bake until golden.

Make the cream filling

  1. In a saucepan, boil the milk.

  2. Stir in the sugar, flour, and eggs, and boil for a few minutes until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

Assemble

  1. Flavor the cream with lemon essence and spread it 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
Beaten eggs give the crust batter structure and, in the cream, thicken and set it.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to release gas, helping the crusts rise and stay light.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, reacting with baking soda to lighten the crust texture.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the crusts and cream their structure.
Milk
Forms the base of the cream filling, providing moisture and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the crusts and cream, and adds tenderness to the batter.

The step that matters

Boil the cream until thickened. The flour and eggs must be cooked through while boiling; this starch and egg setting is what thickens the filling, so it must be stirred and boiled long enough to set before cooling.

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.

More cream pie recipes

Lemon 54Boston 44Sour 38Coconut 24Whipped 20Orange 18 See all 378 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes