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Dessert

Mock Cream Pie

A custard pie with a meringue topping made from eggs, milk, sugar, cornstarch, butter, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Mock Cream Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat together the sugar, cornstarch (or flour), and egg yolks.

  3. Bring the milk to a boil, then stir in the egg mixture.

  4. Add a pinch of salt and 1 teaspoon of butter, mixing well.

Bake and top the pie

  1. Prepare a pie crust and bake it until golden.

  2. Fill the baked crust with the custard mixture, grate nutmeg on top, and bake again.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff, adding 2 tablespoons of sugar.

  4. Spread the meringue over the pie and brown it in the oven.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites whip into the meringue topping.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable custard when heated.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, which thickens as it heats.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and stabilizes the whipped egg white meringue.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the custard.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the boiling milk. Adding hot milk to the eggs too quickly can scramble them. Stirring constantly while combining, and cooking the custard until it thickens, keeps it smooth. Cornstarch needs heat to thicken fully.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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