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Dessert

Wine Custard

A custard made with wine, sugar, eggs, potato flour, and orange‑flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and orange work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 537 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Wine Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the zest of a lemon into the sugar.

  2. Beat the eggs with the potato flour until frothy.

  3. Add the wine and orange-flower water to the egg mixture.

Make and serve the custard

  1. Heat the mixture over low heat, stirring constantly until it froths.

  2. Pour the custard into cups or bowls and serve with macaroons.

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. Potato + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together537 recipes

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

  2. Wine + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Set the custard as they heat, giving it body and a light, frothy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, rubbed with lemon zest, carries its citrus aroma through the dish.
Potato flour
Thickens the custard and helps stabilise it so it does not weep or separate.
Wine
Provides the main liquid and flavour, adding acidity and body to the custard.
Orange-flower water
Adds a floral aroma that complements the wine and sugar.

The step that matters

Heating the egg mixture over low heat. Eggs thicken from gentle heat but curdle if overheated, so low heat and constant stirring keep the custard smooth while it froths.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

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