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Dessert

Dutch Cream

A custard-like dessert made from milk, cream, egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Dutch Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, dilute the egg yolks in the milk.

  2. Mix the milk and egg yolks with the cream, sugar, and chopped vanilla.

  3. Heat the mixture gently, stirring with a spatula until it thickens and sticks to the spatula.

Serve

  1. Serve the cream once it reaches the desired consistency.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set when gently heated, giving it body.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving a smooth, velvety texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the egg yolks thicken.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the dairy.
Vanilla
Contributes aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture gently while stirring. Egg yolk proteins thicken the mixture as they warm, but too much heat or too little stirring can make them scramble and curdle. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the custard smooth as it thickens.

“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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