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Dessert

Havana Cream

A custard made with orange and lemon zest, sugar, eggs, butter, and coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Havana Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Grate the rinds of 1 orange and 1 lemon and squeeze their juice.

  2. Mix the juice and grated rinds with sugar and bring to a boil.

  3. Add butter and coconut, then boil for five minutes.

  4. Stir in the eggs and cook slowly until thick.

Serve

  1. Serve with fruit cake.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + coconuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Coagulate as they heat, thickening the cream into a set custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and helps thicken it as it cooks down.
Lemons
Add acidity and aroma from juice and grated rind.
Oranges
Add acidity, sweetness and aroma from juice and grated rind.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the cream.
Coconut
Adds flavour, texture and body to the cream.

The step that matters

Stir in the eggs and cook slowly until thick. Eggs can scramble if the mixture is too hot or cooked fast. Gentle, steady heat lets the proteins set evenly into a smooth cream instead of curdling.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Blackberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, orange, lemon, butter. 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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