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Dessert

Cream, Vanilla

A thick vanilla custard made with egg yolks, cream, sugar, vanilla essence, and folded egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cream, Vanilla

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix the well-beaten yolks of 4 eggs with 1½ pints of thick cream or new milk.

  2. Add 3 tablespoons of sugar and 4-5 drops of vanilla essence.

  3. Beat the egg white to a firm froth and fold it into the mixture.

  4. Pour the mixture into a jug and place the jug in a saucepan of cold water.

  5. Simmer gently, stirring constantly, until the cream thickens without boiling.

Serve

  1. Pour into custard glasses and sprinkle a little finely sifted sugar on top.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they set with gentle heat, giving the custard its body.
Thick cream or new milk
Provides richness and the liquid base that thickens into a smooth custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the set custard's flavour.
Egg white
Whipped to a firm froth, it adds lightness to the mixture.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, stirring constantly. Egg proteins set at moderate heat but curdle if the mixture boils. A water bath and constant stirring keep the heat gentle so the cream thickens 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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