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Dessert

Maids of Honour

A puff pastry custard filled with lemon, currants, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Maids of Honour

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs and mix with the milk.

  2. Add the egg and milk mixture to the boiling water in a saucepan.

  3. Pour in the lemon juice and remove the curd as it rises to a sieve to drain.

  4. Mix the curd with the beaten egg yolks, clotted cream, lemon zest, cinnamon, nutmeg, currants, and brandy. Mix well.

Bake

  1. Bake in buttered patty pans lined with puff-paste for about 20 minutes.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs and yolks set the curd and give the filling its body.
Milk
Milk combines with the eggs and lemon to form the curd that makes up the filling.
Lemon juice
Acid curdles the milk and eggs, separating the curd and adding tartness.
Clotted cream
Adds fat and richness, making the filling smoother and more tender.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the filling.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Remove the curd as it rises. Lifting the curd out as it forms, rather than letting it sit, keeps it tender and stops it becoming tough or grainy, since egg proteins overset with prolonged heat.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, lemon, cream, cinnamon, nutmeg, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, lemon, cream, cinnamon, nutmeg, brandy. 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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