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Dessert

Raisin Custard

A custard made with milk, eggs, sugar, lemon rind, raisins, and sponge cake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Raisin Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Sweeten the milk with sugar to taste.

  2. Grate the lemon rind into the milk and stir in the beaten eggs.

Assemble the mold

  1. Line a buttered mold with raisins.

  2. Layer slices of sponge cake with raisins in between.

  3. Pour the custard mixture over the layers.

  4. Cover with a sheet of buttered paper and tie a cloth securely over the mold.

Cook

  1. Boil gently for 1 hour.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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, binding the milk into a firm, tender pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, providing moisture that the cake soaks up.
Sponge cake
Acts as the absorbent body of the pudding, soaking up custard to hold its shape.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture between the cake layers.
Butter
Greases the mold so the pudding releases cleanly and the paper does not stick.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 1 hour. A gentle simmer lets the egg custard set evenly; a hard boil can make the eggs curdle and leave the pudding rough and watery.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

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