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Dessert

Custard Pies

A baked custard filling made with eggs, milk, corn starch, sugar, spices, and sea salt, served in pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Custard Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix corn starch with a little milk until smooth.

  2. Beat the eggs and add them to the corn starch mixture.

  3. Thin out the mixture with more milk.

  4. Sweeten and season to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into pie pans lined with pastry.

  2. Grate nutmeg over the top.

  3. Bake until set and lightly browned.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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
Set the custard as they coagulate during baking, giving it structure and body.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture so the custard holds its shape when sliced.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, providing moisture and creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the flavour of the eggs and milk.

The step that matters

Bake until set and lightly browned. Egg proteins set with heat, so underbaking leaves a runny centre while overbaking can make the custard weep or curdle. Look for a centre that barely wobbles.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Dillfits less well

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