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Dessert

Cream Pie

A custard pie with a bottom crust and a top crust, made from milk, flour, sugar, egg yolks, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crusts

  1. Prepare a pie crust and bake it in a pie tin for the bottom crust.

  2. Prepare a top crust in a jelly cake tin.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, take 1 pint of milk and reserve enough to moisten ½ cup of flour.

  2. Boil the remaining milk with ⅔ cup sugar and the beaten yolks of 2 eggs.

  3. Stir in the moistened flour and boil for 3 minutes.

  4. Once cooled, add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill the bottom crust with the filling and cover with the top crust.

  2. Do not fill the crusts until ready to serve.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Flour
Moistened and boiled with the milk, it thickens the custard so it sets firm enough to slice.
Egg yolks
Thicken the boiled custard and add richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps give it a smooth body as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the flour and yolks thicken.

The step that matters

Stir in the moistened flour and boil for 3 minutes. Flour starch only thickens fully when it boils, and the custard needs that boil to set. Stopping early leaves a thin, runny filling. Stir constantly so it does not scorch or lump.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

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