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 cake
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Sift together the flour and cream of tartar in a bowl.
Dissolve the baking soda in the sweet cream and add it to the flour mixture.
Beat the eggs and sugar together, then combine with the flour mixture.
Pour the batter into a cake tin and bake until golden.
Once cool, split the cake in half.
Make the custard
For the custard, combine the yolks of 2 eggs, sugar, and sweet milk in a saucepan.
Cook gently until the mixture thickens, then flavor to taste.
Assemble and serve
Spread the custard between the cake layers and sprinkle the top with powdered sugar.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Cream + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together29,399 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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
- Build structure in the batter and thicken the custard when their yolks are cooked.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and custard and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidifies the batter, helping the leavening react and stabilising the crumb.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the cake.
- Sweet milk
- Forms the body of the custard, setting as it thickens with the egg yolks.
The step that matters
Cooking the custard gently. Egg yolks thicken from heat, but too much heat scrambles them into lumps. Cooking slowly and stirring keeps the custard smooth and evenly thickened.
“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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