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Cream Pie Filling

A sweet milk-based filling thickened with corn starch and egg, flavored as desired.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn 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 ↓

Cream Pie Filling

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Warm the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the sugar.

  3. Mix the corn starch with a little milk to create a slurry.

  4. Add the slurry to the warm milk.

  5. Add the beaten egg and stir well.

  6. Flavor to your liking.

  7. Let cool until thickened.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable custard as it cooks and cools.
Egg
Adds richness and helps give the custard body and a creamy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the filling that the starch thickens.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the flavor.

The step that matters

Add the slurry to the warm milk. Cornstarch only thickens properly when it is dispersed in cold or room-temperature liquid first and then heated, so lumps form if it is added dry or to a hot liquid without being mixed smooth. Stirring keeps the starch evenly distributed.

“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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