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Dessert

Sponge Cream Pie

A pie with a sponge crust and a thickened milk and egg cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sponge Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the crust

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Make the crust for two pies: In a bowl, beat 3 eggs and mix in 1 cup of sugar.

  3. In another bowl, combine 1½ cups of flour and 2 teaspoons of baking powder.

  4. Add the flour mixture to the egg and sugar mixture, then stir in ½ cup of cold water.

  5. Finally, add 1 tablespoon of hot water and mix well.

  6. Pour the batter into deep pie pans and bake immediately.

Make the cream

  1. While the pies cool, prepare the cream: In a tin bucket, combine 1 cup of water and ½ cup of milk.

  2. Place the bucket in a kettle of cold water and heat until the water boils.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat 1 egg and mix in ½ cup of sugar.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of flour or cornstarch mixed with a little cold milk to the egg mixture.

  5. Pour this mixture into the boiling milk and water, stirring until it thickens.

  6. Flavor the cream to taste and let it cool partially before spreading between the pie 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
Beaten eggs build the airy structure of the sponge batter and set the crust as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the sponge rise and become light in the oven.
Flour
Provides the starch and protein that set the crust, and thickens the cream as it heats.
Milk
Adds richness and moisture to the cream and helps it set smoothly when heated.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and cream and helps give the sponge a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Pour the cream mixture into the boiling milk and stir until it thickens. Adding the egg and starch mixture to boiling liquid while stirring keeps it smooth; the starch swells and thickens as it heats, and stopping the stirring or heating too little can leave lumps or a thin cream.

“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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