Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Pie

A lemon-flavored custard pie made with eggs, sugar, flour, and lemon juice, baked in a thin round tin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs for 2 minutes.

  2. Add the sifted sugar and beat for 5 minutes.

  3. Mix 1 cup of flour with the cream of tartar and beat for 1 minute.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the water and add it to the mixture.

  5. Add another cup of flour, lemon juice, and lemon zest.

Bake

  1. Bake in thin round tin plates.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Whipped to trap air, giving the batter lift and a light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps stabilise the beaten eggs.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the batter's shape as it sets.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, stabilising the whipped eggs and aiding rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas, helping it rise.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavour that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in the water before adding it. Baking soda must be fully dissolved and mixed in evenly so it reacts with the acid throughout the batter. Unevenly distributed soda leaves pockets that over-rise or taste bitter, and the rise depends on that reaction happening in the batter before baking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes