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Dessert

Spanish Cream

A custard dessert made with gelatin, milk, eggs, and sugar, chilled and served with sweet cream.

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

Spanish Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Soak the gelatine in ½ pint of warm sweet milk.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and mix in the sugar.

  3. Pour 1 quart of boiling-hot milk over the egg mixture.

  4. Return to the stove, stir in the soaked gelatine, and boil for 2 minutes.

  5. Remove from heat and fold in the beaten egg whites.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a mold and refrigerate until set.

  2. Serve with sweet cream.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the cooled custard into a firm, sliceable body as it chills.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites lighten the texture when folded in.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour and sets around the gelatine.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the richness of the eggs and milk.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling milk over the egg mixture. Hot milk can scramble egg yolks if added too quickly. Pour slowly while whisking so the yolks warm gradually and the custard thickens smoothly instead of curdling.

“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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