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Dessert

Royal Cream Pie, American

A custard pie made with cream, flour, sugar, eggs, milk, ginger, and fruit, baked in a flaky crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Royal Cream Pie, American

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix flour, sugar, and milk in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Gradually add the cream, bringing the mixture back to a boil.

  3. Remove from heat and beat in the eggs, leaving out two egg whites.

  4. Line a pie plate with flaky crust and pour in the cream mixture.

Bake and top

  1. Bake until the surface is golden brown.

  2. Beat the reserved egg whites with 1 ounce of sugar and a little spice.

  3. Spread the egg white mixture on top in a rocky fashion and return to the oven to brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with fruit, either raw or cooked, and offer sugar on the side.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Set the custard as they cook, and their whites form the rough topping.
Flour
Thickens the custard when heated with liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and fat for a smooth, silky texture.
Milk
Supplies liquid and milk solids that help the custard brown lightly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the egg white topping brown.

The step that matters

Beat in the eggs off the heat. Eggs curdle and turn grainy when exposed to high heat, so removing the custard from the heat before adding them keeps it smooth as the proteins set gently.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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