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Dessert

Cream Pie

A baked pie filled with a sweet cream mixture made from corn starch, milk, eggs, sugar, butter, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

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 filling

  1. Mix corn starch with a little milk in a bowl.

  2. Add 2 eggs to the mixture.

  3. Boil the remaining milk.

  4. Stir the boiled milk slowly with the sugar and butter.

  5. Add lemon juice and mix well.

Make the cake and assemble

  1. Beat 3 eggs with white sugar in another bowl.

  2. Add flour mixed with baking powder and cold water and combine well.

  3. Bake in two pie pans at 400°F (200°C).

  4. Split the cake while hot.

  5. Spread the cream mixture inside.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable cream when heated.
Eggs
Add richness and help the filling set, and give the cake structure and lift.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake so it holds together when split.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a soft, smooth texture in the cream.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet, rich cream.

The step that matters

Stir the boiled milk slowly. Corn starch only thickens when heated and needs to be evenly dispersed. Pouring in the hot milk slowly while stirring keeps lumps from forming.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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