Skip to main content
Dessert

French Cream Pie

A custard pie made with egg yolks, sweet milk, sugar, flour, butter, and topped with sweetened whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
French Cream Pie

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 ↓

French Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine egg yolks, sweet milk, sugar, flour, and butter.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thick like custard.

  3. Pour the custard into a pre-baked pie crust.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then sweeten to taste.

  2. Spread the sweetened egg whites over the pie and brown 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the milk mixture into a custard and add richness.
Flour
Helps thicken the custard so it holds its shape when sliced.
Egg whites
Whipped and spread on top, they set and brown into a light meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and the meringue topping.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the custard.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until thick. Stirring constantly over medium heat keeps the egg yolks and starch from scorching or lumping, and the custard must thicken fully before filling, since it will not firm up much further once cooled.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Milletfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes