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Dessert

Cream Pie

A custard pie baked in a pre‑baked crust, topped with a browned meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Scald 1½ cups of milk with the butter and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with the corn-starch, the remaining 1½ cups of milk, and the lemon extract.

Fill and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the pre-baked pie crust.

  2. Bake the pie until set.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks with a little sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie.

  3. Return the pie to the oven and brown the meringue slightly.

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. Corn + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together349 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and provides moisture and body.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard as they set, and whites whip into a stable meringue foam.
Corn-starch
Thickens the custard filling by gelatinizing when heated with liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, smoother texture and mouthfeel in the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam.
Lemon extract
Adds a bright citrus aroma that flavors the custard filling.

The step that matters

Bake the pie until set. The egg proteins and cornstarch must fully set the custard. Underbaking leaves a runny filling, while overbaking can make it weep and turn tough.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Lima beansfits about as well
  4. Beansfits about as well

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