Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Cream Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Make the custard
Beat together the sugar, egg yolks, and cornstarch in a bowl.
Bring the milk to a boil.
Stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk. Add a pinch of salt and cook until thick.
Assemble and bake
Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, adding 2 tablespoons of sugar.
Spread the thickened mixture into the baked pie crust.
Top with the beaten egg whites. Brown in the oven.
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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Egg + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 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
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the custard and add richness to the filling.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base of the custard filling.
- Cornstarch
- Thickens the milk mixture as it heats, giving the filling a sliceable body.
- Egg whites
- Whipped to stiff peaks to form a light topping that browns in the oven.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the custard and helps stabilise the whipped egg white topping.
The step that matters
Cook until thick. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil and is cooked long enough. Undercooked starch leaves the filling thin and runny, so it may not set when cooled.
“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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