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Dessert

Currant Custard

A custard made from currants, water, sugar, ground rice, nutmeg, and garnished with ratafia.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,779 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Currant Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Place currants in a jar, cover it, and simmer in a pan of cold water until juice flows freely.

  2. Mix 2 cups of water with the extracted juice and add sugar.

  3. Heat the liquid on the stove.

Make the custard

  1. Combine a small portion of ground rice with a little cold liquid until smooth, then gradually add it to the rest.

  2. Simmer gently, stirring constantly, until the mixture is smooth and thickened.

  3. Pour into cups or glasses and let stand overnight to stiffen.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill in a cold place before serving.

  2. Grate nutmeg on top and add a ratafia to each custard before serving.

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 + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Currant + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + ricetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

  5. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Fresh ripe currants
Provide the main flavour and juice that form the custard's body.
Ground rice
Thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the custard a set, smooth texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the currant juice.

The step that matters

Adding the ground rice to the liquid. Ground rice must be mixed smooth with cold liquid before being added gradually to the hot mixture. Added dry or all at once, it clumps and cannot thicken evenly, leaving lumps in the custard.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, rice, nutmeg. 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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