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Dessert

Spanish Cream

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 gelatin in the milk for 30 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until light.

  3. Whip the egg whites to a stiff froth.

Make the custard

  1. Heat the soaked gelatin and milk in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolks.

Fold and set

  1. Gently fold in the whipped egg whites and vanilla.

  2. Pour into a wet mold and cool.

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 cream so it holds its shape when turned out of the mold.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard richly, while whites lighten it with trapped air.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the gelatine sets into a cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the yolks whisk up light and pale.
Vanilla
Adds aroma that rounds out the eggy, milky flavour.

The step that matters

Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolks. Egg yolks scramble when they meet boiling liquid, leaving lumps. Taking the milk off the heat first lets the yolks thicken it gently and smoothly.

“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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