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Dessert

Fifty Lunches

A baked dessert of cooked spaghetti mixed with butter, Parmesan, milk, sugar, lemon zest, gelatin, egg yolks, kirsch, whipped cream, and strawberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fifty Lunches

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the spaghetti crust

  1. Boil the spaghetti until cooked and strain it.

  2. While hot, stir in butter and grated Parmesan.

  3. Butter a pie dish and line it with the spaghetti, leaving a hollow in the center.

  4. Cover the surface with remaining spaghetti and smooth it out.

  5. Dust with grated Parmesan and dot with butter.

  6. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until thoroughly hot and the surface is golden.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk, sugar, and lemon zest and bring the mixture to a boil.

  2. Stir in the soaked gelatin until dissolved and cool the mixture slightly.

  3. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks, then gradually add the milk mixture to the yolks while stirring gently.

  4. Place the bowl over boiling water and cook until thickened.

  5. Strain the custard through a sieve.

  6. While it cools, flavor with kirsch and fold in the whipped cream.

Assemble and serve

  1. Line a Charlotte mold with wet paper.

  2. Layer the bottom with marinated strawberries.

  3. Pour enough cream to cover the strawberries.

  4. Repeat layering until the mold is full.

  5. Once firm, dip the mold in hot water to release.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set when gently heated.
Gelatine
Sets the cream custard so it holds its shape when chilled and unmolded.
Whipped cream
Adds light, airy texture and moisture to the custard layers.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory flavor and helps the spaghetti crust brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the spaghetti crust turn golden.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and carries its creamy body.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard over boiling water. Egg yolks thicken as they warm, but if the heat is too high they scramble and turn grainy. Gentle, steady heat keeps the custard smooth before the gelatine sets it.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Bananafits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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