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Dessert

Corn Starch Pie

A custard pie made with corn starch, milk, eggs, and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Combine corn starch, milk, egg yolks, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring until it thickens like custard.

  3. Pour the mixture into deep plates and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gradually add 3 tablespoons of sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue over the baked custard and brown it under the broiler.

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. Corn + milktop 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

Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a custard as it heats.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the custard, adding richness and structure when set.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks to form the meringue topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and stabilizes the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until it thickens. Cornstarch thickens only when the mixture reaches a simmer and is stirred constantly, so undercooked custard stays thin and may not set after baking. Stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the pan bottom.

“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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