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Dessert

Burnt Cream

A custard made from cream, lemon peel, sugar, eggs, and flour, browned on top.

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

Burnt Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the cream with lemon peel.

  2. Sweeten with white sugar to taste.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and egg whites together.

  4. Mix the flour with some cold cream to form a smooth paste.

  5. Stir the paste into the boiling cream.

  6. Remove from heat.

  7. Let cool slightly before adding the eggs.

  8. Add the eggs.

  9. Return to heat.

  10. Stir constantly.

  11. Cook until a custard forms.

  12. Pour into a dish.

Brown and serve

  1. Sprinkle with sifted sugar.

  2. Brown with a salamander.

  3. Serve cold.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Provides richness and the body of the custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set and add richness.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness to the custard mixture.
Flour
Stabilises the custard so it thickens without splitting.
White sugar
Sweetens the custard and forms the crisp caramel topping when browned.

The step that matters

Stir constantly while the custard cooks. Egg proteins set with heat and can curdle or scramble if the mixture overheats or sits still. Constant stirring keeps the heat even so the custard thickens smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, egg, flour. 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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