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Dessert

Bavarian Cream

A chilled custard dessert made with milk, eggs, vanilla, gelatin, sugar, salt, and whipped cream.

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

Bavarian Cream

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a double boiler with the vanilla bean.

  2. Pour the hot milk over the beaten eggs and sugar, then add salt.

  3. Return to the heat and let thicken.

Set the cream

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in a small amount of water and add it to the cooled custard.

  2. Stir until it begins to congeal, then fold in the whipped cream using a wire whip.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold and set it on ice.

  4. Make this cream the day 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. 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. Vanilla + creamtop 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

Eggs
Thicken the custard as they cook and give the cream its rich body.
Gelatine
Sets the cooled custard so it holds its shape when unmolded.
Whipped cream
Adds airy lightness and moisture, making the set cream tender rather than dense.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, carrying the vanilla flavor and setting with the eggs.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the richness of the eggs and cream.

The step that matters

Fold the whipped cream into the partly set custard. If the custard is still warm or fully set, the cream will deflate or form lumps. Stirring only until the mixture begins to congeal lets the gelatine hold air from the whipped cream evenly.

“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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