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Dessert

Egg Cream

A custard-like cream made from milk, eggs, sugar, currant jelly, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,475 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Egg Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a bowl, combine the milk, 5 eggs, and sugar to taste, leaving out the whites of 4 eggs.

  2. Cool the mixture and flavor it with your choice of extract just before using.

Beat the egg whites

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the reserved egg whites with currant jelly and powdered sugar until light and smooth.

Cook the mixture

  1. Prepare a double boiler by placing the milk mixture in a bucket set in a kettle of boiling water.

  2. Stir constantly until the mixture thickens, being careful not to overheat to avoid lumps.

Serve

  1. Top the cooled cream with the beaten egg white mixture as desired.

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 + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cream is built on and gives it body.
Eggs
Whole eggs thicken the milk as they heat; beaten whites add lightness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream to taste.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness, fruity flavor and color to the beaten whites.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the beaten whites and helps them stay smooth and glossy.

The step that matters

Stirring the milk mixture over boiling water. Egg proteins set when heated, so if the mixture overheats it can curdle and form lumps. Constant stirring and gentle heat keep it smooth as it thickens.

Swap the currant

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

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

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