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Dessert

Cream Peach Pie

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

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.

Assemble the pie

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

  2. Line a pie plate with the pie crust.

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

  4. Cover with an upper crust, buttering the edge where it touches the lower crust.

Bake

  1. Bake until golden brown.

Make the cream and finish

  1. While the pie is still hot, lift the crust and pour in the cream mixture.

  2. In a double boiler, heat the milk, then add the whipped egg whites, remaining sugar, and cornstarch.

  3. Cook for 3 minutes, stirring until thickened, then cool completely before pouring into the pie.

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

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

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

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Pie crust
Forms the container that holds the filling while it bakes.
Peaches
Provide the fruit filling and its juices, which add moisture and flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and draws juice from the peaches to help form the filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream that sets when heated and thickened.
Egg whites
Help the cream set and give it a light, airy structure when heated.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cream mixture as it heats, giving it a smooth, sliceable body.

The step that matters

Cooking the cream until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens once the mixture is hot enough to gelatinize its starch. Stopping early leaves the cream runny, so stir steadily over the double boiler until it thickens before cooling it.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, 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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