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Dessert

Burnt Cream

A thickened milk custard flavored with burnt brown sugar, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Burnt Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Take 1 quart of milk and reserve enough to thoroughly blend with ¾ cup of wheat flour.

  2. Scald the remaining milk and pour it over the flour mixture, stirring well until smooth.

  3. Return the mixture to the saucepan and boil until it thickens.

Burn the sugar and combine

  1. In another pan, melt and burn 1 cup of brown sugar.

  2. Pour the boiling milk and flour mixture into the burnt sugar and boil all together.

Mould and serve

  1. Mould the mixture and serve with whipped cream around the dish.

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 + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Wheat + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together681 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Wheat flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set custard as it boils.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving it body and creaminess.
Brown sugar
Caramelises into the burnt flavour and colour that defines the dish.

The step that matters

Burning the brown sugar. Sugar caramelises and then burns quickly once it passes its colour window, turning bitter. Cooking it slowly over moderate heat and stopping at deep amber gives the intended flavour without acrid notes.

“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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