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Dessert

Bavarian Cream

A chilled custard dessert made with cream, sugar, isinglass, vanilla, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Bavarian Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatin

  1. Soak the isinglass in cold water for 2 hours.

Make the custard

  1. Make a custard with 1 pint of cream and the egg yolks.

  2. Drain the water from the isinglass and stir it into the hot custard before removing from heat.

Finish and set

  1. While the custard cools, whip the remaining pint of cream until frothy and set it on a sieve.

  2. Once the custard is completely cool and thick, gradually stir in the whipped cream.

  3. Beat the mixture well, pour it into molds, and refrigerate until set.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Vanilla + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cream
Whipped and folded in, it adds lightness and a rich, creamy texture to the set dessert.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard base and add richness and body to the finished cream.
Isinglass
Gelatin-like setting agent that firms the cream so it holds its shape when chilled.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the richness of the yolks and cream.

The step that matters

Stirring the isinglass into the custard. The custard must be hot enough to dissolve the isinglass evenly but removed from heat before it scrambles, and the whipped cream should only be folded in once the custard is cool and thick so it does not deflate or thin the mixture.

“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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