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Dessert

Cream Peach Pie

A fruit pie with peaches topped with a creamy custard made from milk, sugar, cornstarch, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Peach Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pie

  1. Pare and halve the peaches.

  2. Line the pie pans with pie crust.

  3. Fill the crust with peaches and sprinkle with ½ cup sugar.

  4. Lay the upper crust on lightly and brush the lower rim with melted butter.

  5. Bake the pie until golden brown.

Make the cream

  1. In a saucepan, combine 1 cup milk with a pinch of baking soda.

  2. Stir in ½ teaspoon cornstarch mixed with a little cold milk and 2 tablespoons sugar.

  3. Cook for three minutes, then remove from heat.

  4. Beat in the frothed egg whites until creamy and let cool.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once the pie is baked, lift the top crust and pour in the cream mixture.

  2. Replace the crust and let the pie cool.

  3. Sift sugar over the top before serving.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Peach + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  5. Peach + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Provide the fruit filling and its juice, which sweetens and moistens the pie.
Egg whites
Whipped into the cream mixture to lighten its texture and help it set creamy.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture so it holds together rather than running out.
Milk
Forms the base of the cream filling, adding richness and moisture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the top crust brown and seal at the rim.

The step that matters

Beat in the frothed egg whites until creamy. Cooking the cornstarch mixture first thickens it; adding whites to a hot, thick base needs gentle beating so they blend smoothly and do not scramble or deflate, keeping the filling light and creamy.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

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