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Dessert

Cream Pie

A baked pie with a creamy filling made from milk, corn starch, eggs, sugar, butter, lemon juice, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 cream filling

  1. Boil 1 pint of new milk.

  2. In a bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of corn starch with a little milk.

  3. Add 2 eggs to the corn starch mixture.

  4. Once the milk has boiled, slowly stir in the corn starch mixture, 1 scant teacup of sugar, and ½ cup of butter.

  5. Add 2 teaspoons of lemon juice and mix well.

Make the batter

  1. In another bowl, beat 3 eggs and add 1 cup of white sugar.

  2. Mix in 1½ cups of flour and 1 teaspoon of baking powder.

  3. Add 3 tablespoons of cold water and mix until smooth.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the batter into 2 pie pans and bake at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Once baked, split the cake while hot and spread the cream filling 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. Milk + corntop 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

Eggs
Bind the filling and set the batter, giving it structure as they cook.
Corn starch
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth, sliceable cream filling.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the filling.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake batter as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and batter and helps the cake brown.

The step that matters

Adding the corn starch mixture to the boiling milk. Stir slowly and keep stirring, because cornstarch thickens only when hot and can lump or scorch if added unevenly to the milk.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, corn, 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.

More cream pie recipes

Lemon 54Boston 44Sour 38Coconut 24Whipped 20Orange 18 See all 378 →

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