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Dessert

Cream Pie

A baked cake made with milk, corn starch, eggs, sugar, butter, lemon juice, flour, baking powder, and water, served with a cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix cornstarch with a little milk until smooth.

  3. Add the eggs to the cornstarch mixture.

  4. Once the milk has boiled, slowly stir in the cornstarch mixture.

  5. Add the sugar and butter, stirring until combined.

Make the batter and bake

  1. In another bowl, mix the flour and baking powder.

  2. Add the white sugar and cold water to the flour mixture, stirring until smooth.

  3. Divide the batter into two pie pans and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

Assemble

  1. Split the cakes while hot and spread the cream filling between them.

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

Cornstarch (in the method)
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, spreadable cream as it heats.
Eggs
Enrich the filling and help it set as it thickens.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the baked cakes together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cakes rise and stay light.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the filling and gives it creaminess.

The step that matters

Adding the cornstarch mixture to the boiling milk. Stirring slowly while pouring keeps the starch dispersed so it does not clump. Cornstarch thickens only when heated, so the filling must be hot enough for the starch to swell and set properly.

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.

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