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Dessert

Cream for Fruit Tarts

A custard made by boiling cinnamon, peach leaves or bitter almonds in milk, sweetened, then folded with beaten eggs and thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 625 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Cream for Fruit Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the cinnamon, peach leaves, or bitter almonds in the milk.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Sweeten the strained mixture.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Thicken the cream

  1. Mix in the well-beaten eggs.

  2. Stir constantly over low heat until it thickens.

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. Cinnamon + peachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Milk
Forms the body of the cream and sets into a smooth, thickened custard with the eggs.
Eggs
Thicken the cream as they set on gentle heat, giving it body and richness.
Cinnamon stick
Infuses the milk with warm, aromatic flavour during boiling.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream to taste.

The step that matters

Stir constantly over low heat until it thickens. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures, so over high heat or without constant stirring the eggs can scramble or curdle before the cream thickens evenly.

Swap the peach

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

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

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