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Dessert

Cream Pie

A baked pie with a lemon-flavored cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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

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 sponge

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the eggs and sugar together until well combined.

  3. Add the flour, lemon juice, lemon rind, and dissolved baking soda.

  4. Stir in the cold water and mix until smooth.

  5. Pour the mixture into jelly tins and bake until done.

Make the cream filling

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, sugar, and eggs until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the hot milk to the egg mixture, stirring constantly.

  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook until thickened.

Assemble

  1. Fill the baked pie crust with the cream filling.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Egg + flourtop 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
Bind the batter and set the custard, giving structure to both the sponge and the filling.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the sponge and thickens the cream filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and filling and helps the sponge brown.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream filling, adding richness and moisture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the lemon to help the sponge rise.

The step that matters

Adding the hot milk to the egg mixture. Pouring hot milk in too quickly, or without constant stirring, can scramble the eggs. Adding it gradually while stirring tempers the eggs so the custard thickens smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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