Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream for Filling

A peach-flavored cream used as a filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cream for Filling

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine milk and sugar in a pot over medium heat.

  2. Bring to a boil, then stir in corn starch.

  3. Add the beaten egg and butter, mixing well.

  4. Flavor with peach as desired.

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. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + peachtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together94 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Provides the liquid base that the starch thickens into a creamy filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavor of the filling.
Corn starch
Thickens the hot liquid into a smooth, set cream as it gelatinizes.
Egg
Adds richness and helps give the filling body and a custard-like texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother mouthfeel and a rounder flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring in the corn starch after the milk boils. Corn starch must be stirred in while the liquid is hot and kept moving so it dissolves evenly and thickens without lumps. Adding the beaten egg to very hot mixture too quickly can scramble it, so it should be mixed in steadily.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

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

You might also like

Corn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesPeach Ice CreamPeach Ice Cream64 recipesPeach FrittersPeach Fritters55 recipes