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Dessert

Boston Cream Pie

A custard pie with a butter and flour crust, flavored with lemon or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Boston Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, bring 1 pint of milk to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, beat 2 eggs, then add ½ cup sugar and ½ cup flour; mix well.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk, add 1 ounce of butter and ¼ teaspoon salt, and stir until thickened.

  4. Flavor with ½ teaspoon of lemon or vanilla extract.

Make the crust

  1. For the crust, beat 3 eggs separately, then mix with 1 cup sugar, ¼ teaspoon salt, 1½ cups sifted flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, and 2 tablespoons milk or water.

  2. Divide the batter in half and bake in pie tins until golden.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once cooled, split each crust in half and spread half of the cream between them.

  2. Serve cold.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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
Thicken the custard and give the crust its structure as they set.
Flour
Thickens the custard and gives the crust its body as it sets.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and crust and helps the crust brown.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the custard.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, which thickens as the starch and egg set.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the crust batter, helping it rise and turn light.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk. Eggs can scramble if added to very hot liquid too fast. Whisk the egg mixture steadily into the milk so the proteins set smoothly and the custard thickens evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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