Skip to main content
Dessert

Spanish Cream

A custard made with egg yolks, sugar, ground rice, and milk, garnished with blanched almonds and citron strips.

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

Why it works: Rice and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,456 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Spanish Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks slightly in a bowl.

  2. Combine the egg yolks, sugar, ground rice, and milk in a saucepan.

  3. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a glass dish.

  2. Garnish with blanched almonds and strips of citron.

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. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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 milk as they cook and add richness to the custard.
Ground rice
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the cream body and a smooth texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the milk and yolks.
Milk
Forms the base of the cream and sets into a soft custard when heated and thickened.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens. Egg yolks and starch thicken the milk, but if the heat is too high or the mixture is left unstirred, the yolks can scramble and the bottom can scorch. Constant stirring keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, rice, milk):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Peanutfits about as well
  3. Milletfits about as well
  4. Sesamefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, rice, milk. 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.

More spanish cream recipes

Pudding 3 See all 231 →

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipesAlmond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipes