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Dessert

Cream Pie

A custard pie with lemon rind, sweetened with powdered sugar and vanilla, baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix powdered sugar, flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  4. Add the grated lemon rind and pour into a pie crust.

Make the cream filling

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk in a double boiler until scalding hot.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine ½ cup sugar, a pinch of salt, and 1 egg; mix well.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the hot milk and cook until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat, let cool, and stir in vanilla extract.

  5. Pour the cream filling between the crusts.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Whites whipped to stiff foam give the batter lift and an airy structure.
Flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the batter together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to release gas and help the batter rise.
Cream of tartar
Acid that stabilises whipped egg whites and reacts with baking soda to aid rising.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and gives it body and moisture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the egg and milk filling.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thickened. Egg proteins set and thicken the hot milk as it cooks. If the mixture overheats or cooks too fast, the eggs can curdle and the filling turns grainy, so heat it gently and stir constantly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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