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Dessert

Spanish Cream

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

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 ↓

Spanish Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in the milk for one hour.

Make the custard

  1. Heat the mixture in a dish until it comes to a boil.

  2. Add the egg yolks and sugar, and bring to a boil again.

Finish

  1. Remove from heat and fold in the beaten egg whites, salt, and vanilla.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  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).

Sugar and vanilla 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid so the cream holds its shape when chilled.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk mixture and add richness to the custard.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they make the cream light and airy.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the gelatine and eggs set into.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the richness of the yolks.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites off the heat. Removing the mixture from heat before folding in the beaten whites keeps them from cooking and deflating, so the cream stays light and airy.

“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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