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Dessert

Spanish Cream

A gelatin-based custard made with milk, egg yolks, sugar, and flavored with vanilla or lemon.

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 the custard

  1. Soak the gelatin in the milk for 1 hour.

  2. Heat the milk and gelatin mixture on the stove, stirring well as it warms.

  3. Beat the yolks with the sugar until light, then add to the scalding milk, stirring continuously.

  4. Heat the mixture to boiling point, then strain through a thin cloth.

Set and flavor

  1. When almost cold, pour into a mold that has been wet with cold water.

  2. Flavor with vanilla or lemon.

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 milk and yolk mixture into a firm, sliceable custard as it cools.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream and carries the gelatine.
Egg yolks
Add richness and thicken the custard as they heat with the milk.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and softens the set texture slightly.

The step that matters

Adding the yolks to the hot milk. If the yolks are poured into very hot milk without constant stirring, they can scramble. Beating them with sugar first and stirring continuously helps them blend smoothly into the custard.

“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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