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Dessert

Royal Cream Pie, American

A custard pie made with cream, flour, sugar, eggs, milk, ginger, and fruit, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Royal Cream Pie, American

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix flour, sugar, and milk in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Gradually add cream, bringing the mixture back to a boil.

  3. Remove from heat and beat in 3 eggs, reserving 2 egg whites.

Bake and finish

  1. Line a pie plate with flaky crust and pour in the cream mixture.

  2. Bake until the surface is golden brown.

  3. Beat the reserved egg whites with 1 ounce of sugar and a little spice, then spread on top of the pie.

  4. Return to the oven to brown the meringue.

  5. Serve with fruit on the side.

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. Cream + sugartop 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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 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

Flour
Starch that thickens the milk and sugar mixture so the filling holds its shape.
Eggs
Proteins set the custard when baked, and the reserved whites whip into the meringue topping.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the filling a smooth, tender texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the flour thickens into the base of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the meringue brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Beat in the eggs off the heat. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures, so adding them to a very hot mixture can scramble them and leave the custard grainy. Let the mixture cool slightly first.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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