Skip to main content
Dessert

Corn-starch Pie

A custard pie thickened with corn starch, milk, eggs, and sugar, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Corn-starch Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix the corn starch with a little milk.

  2. Boil the remaining milk until it thickens to a cream.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and add the corn starch mixture.

  4. Stir in the boiled milk and sugar.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff and spread on top before serving.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard filling.
Corn starch
Thickens the filling as it heats and gelatinizes in the liquid.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set into a rich, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances its flavor.
Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they form a light foam topping for the pie.

The step that matters

Boil the remaining milk until it thickens to a cream. Corn starch only thickens fully once it reaches a boil, when its granules swell and gelatinize. If the milk is not brought to a full boil, the filling may stay thin and runny after baking.

“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

Corn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesCorn CakesCorn Cakes22 recipesGreen Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding14 recipes