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Dessert

Silver Lake Custard

A custard dessert made with sponge cake, cream, Madeira wine, and optional strawberries, topped with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Silver Lake Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Bake the sponge cake in a square pan and place it in a deep dish.

  2. Combine the cream or milk with the Madeira wine and sweeten to taste.

  3. Saturate the sponge cake completely with the cream mixture.

Assemble and serve

  1. Prepare an island and place it on top of the cake using a tablespoon, ensuring the spoonfuls do not touch.

  2. If in strawberry season, add 6-8 large strawberries on each spoonful just before serving.

  3. Sift white sugar over the top and serve in saucers with the remaining cream.

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

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

  2. Cream + madeira winetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Madeira wine + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sponge cake
Forms the absorbent base that soaks up the cream mixture and holds its shape.
Cream or rich milk
Adds richness, moisture and a soft, smooth body to the dessert.
Madeira wine
Contributes a distinctive aroma and mellow, fortified flavour to the cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream mixture and the finished top layer.

The step that matters

Saturate the sponge cake completely with the cream mixture. Sponge cake is porous and absorbs liquid quickly. Thorough soaking gives even moisture throughout, while dry pockets stay firm and taste bland.

“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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