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Dessert

Flan Custard

A sweet custard flavored with lemon and cinnamon, set in a bain-marie and chilled before serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Flan Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Pour the milk into a clean saucepan and flavor it with lemon essence and the stick of cinnamon.

  2. Heat until just boiling, then strain into another saucepan and let it cool.

  3. Stir in the sugar and the beaten egg yolks until well combined.

  4. Set the saucepan in a bain-marie or a larger vessel filled with boiling water on the stove.

  5. Stir continuously until the mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon.

Serve

  1. Pour into glasses and refrigerate until cold before serving.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Yolks thicken the custard as they set with gentle heat, giving it structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and contributes creaminess and moisture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the set custard's flavor.

The step that matters

Stir continuously over the boiling water. Egg proteins begin to set around 70°C and can curdle or turn grainy if the mixture overheats or stands still. Constant stirring over gentle heat keeps the custard smooth and thickened.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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