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Dessert

Fried Cream

A dessert of thickened flour and milk custard, cut into squares, coated in egg and crumbs, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix the flour and 5 eggs in a bowl.

  2. Dilute the mixture with 1 quart of milk.

  3. Add salt and flavoring.

  4. Stir over medium heat for 15 minutes.

  5. Add the sugar and 3 egg yolks, mixing well.

  6. Spread the mixture 1 inch thick on a platter to cool.

Cut and fry

  1. Once cooled, cut into squares.

  2. Roll each square in egg and then in crumbs.

  3. Fry in boiling lard until golden brown.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so it sets into a firm custard that can be cut.
Eggs
Add structure and set the custard as it cooks and cools.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and keeps it tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried surface brown.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, making the custard smoother and creamier.

The step that matters

Spread the mixture 1 inch thick on a platter to cool. The custard must cool fully and firm up before cutting; cutting it warm lets the soft starch-thickened mixture collapse and stick, so the squares keep their shape for frying.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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