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Dessert

Cream Pie

A custard pie made with egg yolks, sugar, milk, flour, boiled milk, topped with beaten egg white and flavoring, served with cream cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cream cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,393 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, sugar, milk, and flour to form a paste.

  2. Stir the paste into the boiling milk in a double boiler until thick.

Assemble and serve

  1. Prepare your pie crust.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg white with sugar and flavoring until stiff peaks form.

  3. Spread the egg white mixture over the top of the pie.

  4. Serve with cream cheese.

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 + cream cheesetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,393 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Milk + flourtop 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and enrich it with richness and a smooth set.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the filling holds its shape when cut.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the filling that sets as it thickens.
Egg white
Whipped with sugar to form a stiff, airy topping over the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the whipped egg white topping.

The step that matters

Stirring the paste into the boiling milk until thick. The egg yolks and flour must be stirred in gently and cooked slowly over a double boiler. Starch thickens as it heats, and the yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated, leaving a lumpy 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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