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Dessert

Cream Pie

A layered cake with a sweet cream filling made from flour, sugar, eggs, milk, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in 1 tablespoon of water.

  3. In a bowl, mix the flour, sugar, and cream of tartar.

  4. Add the eggs and stir well.

  5. Incorporate the dissolved baking soda; add more flour if the mixture is not stiff enough.

Make the cream

  1. For the cream, boil the milk.

  2. In another bowl, beat together the sugar, egg, and flour.

  3. Stir in a little cold milk, then add this mixture to the boiling milk.

Assemble

  1. Once both the cake and cream are cold, split the cake and spread the cream between the layers.

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. Sugar + creamtop 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake and thickens the cream.
Baking soda
Reacts with cream of tartar to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda and helps stabilise the rise.
Milk
Forms the base of the cream, adding moisture and richness as it thickens.

The step that matters

Adding the flour-sugar-egg mixture to the boiling milk. Flour thickens the cream only when its starch is heated in liquid, but if the mixture is added too quickly or without a little cold milk first, it can clump and turn lumpy. Stirring in cold milk before combining helps it blend smoothly.

“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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