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Dessert

Rusks, with Jam

A custard dessert made by soaking rusks in milk, layering jam, and topping with powdered sugar or beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rusks, with Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Pour 4 cups of boiling milk over 5 to 6 rusks in a pie dish.

  2. Let them soak for 10 minutes.

  3. Beat the rusks lightly with a fork.

  4. Spread a layer of good jam over the rusks.

Make the custard

  1. In a separate bowl, mix 1 pint of milk, 3 egg yolks, sugar, and flavoring to make custard.

  2. Pour the custard over the jam-covered rusks.

Cool and serve

  1. Allow the preparation to cool.

  2. Sift powdered sugar over the top or add beaten egg whites 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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Rusks
Soak up the hot milk and form the soft, absorbent base of the dessert.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard that sets as it cools.
Milk
Provides the liquid that soaks the rusks and forms the custard.
Jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavor between the rusks and custard.

The step that matters

Pour the custard over the jam-covered rusks. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle or turn grainy if overheated, so the custard should be cooked gently and stirred until smooth before it is poured over the base.

“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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