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Dessert

Rich Cream Pie

A pie with a sweet cream filling made from eggs, sugar, flour, milk, and flavored with lemon or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Rich Cream Pie

makes three pies

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.

Prepare the pie base

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

  2. In a bowl, rub the cream of tartar into the flour.

  3. In another bowl, stir together the eggs, sugar, and flour for one minute.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the cold milk and add it to the mixture when ready to bake.

Make the cream filling

  1. For the cream filling, boil 1 pint of milk.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat together 2 eggs, 1 cup of sugar, and ½ cup of flour.

  3. Pour the egg mixture into the boiling milk and stir until thickened.

  4. Flavor the cream with lemon or vanilla, then fill the split pies.

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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 thicken the cream filling as they set with heat.
Flour
Provides structure to the pie base and thickens the cream filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps tenderize the pie base.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and stabilizes it for a lighter rise with baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the pie base.
Milk
Supplies moisture and richness to the batter and the cream filling.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the boiling milk. Eggs thicken when heated, but if they are added too fast or the milk is not kept stirred, they can scramble into lumps instead of forming a smooth, thick custard.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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