Skip to main content
Dessert

Cold Custard, or Slip

A chilled milk custard flavored with sugar, peach oil or vanilla, set with rennet wine and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cold Custard, or Slip

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Warm the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Sweeten the milk with sugar and flavor it with peach oil or vanilla.

  3. Stir the mixture well and pour it into a serving dish.

  4. Add the rennet wine and stir to combine.

Set and serve

  1. Set the dish aside to cool.

  2. Serve with cream and sugar, or enjoy it plain if sweet enough.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  3. Peach + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Its proteins and fat set into a soft, creamy custard once rennet is added.
Rennet wine
Its rennet enzymes curdle the milk proteins so the mixture sets instead of staying liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the milk.
Peach oil or vanilla
Adds aroma and flavor to the custard.

The step that matters

Adding the rennet wine. Rennet enzymes work best at mild warmth and can be weakened by too much heat, so the milk should be warm rather than hot when the rennet goes in. Stir just enough to combine, then leave the dish undisturbed so the custard can set.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, wine, cream. 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.

You might also like

Peach Ice CreamPeach Ice Cream64 recipesPeach FrittersPeach Fritters55 recipesPeach MeringuePeach Meringue40 recipesPeach IcePeach Ice16 recipes