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Dessert

Cold Desserts

A chilled custard made with sugar, water, eggs, whipped cream, rolled macaroons, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cold Desserts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil sugar and water together for 30 minutes.

  2. Beat the eggs well and stir them into the boiling syrup.

  3. Place the mixture in a double boiler over boiling water and beat for 8 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and place the pan in cold water, beating until cold.

Finish and set

  1. Add flavoring and whipped cream, then stir in the rolled macaroons.

  2. Pour the mixture into molds and let stand for 2 hours.

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

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

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

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

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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
Set the custard as they cook into the hot syrup, giving it body and structure.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and air, making the chilled custard light and creamy.
Rolled macaroons
Add texture and a toasted almond-like sweetness to the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, boiled with water, forms the syrup base.

The step that matters

Stir the eggs into the boiling syrup. Adding beaten eggs to very hot syrup can scramble them into lumps. Beating them well first and stirring steadily into the syrup helps them blend smoothly and thicken evenly.

“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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