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Dessert

Wine Custard

A custard made with sherry wine, milk, sugar, corn starch, eggs, and lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Wine Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk, sugar, and lemon extract.

  2. Place the saucepan in a larger pan filled with boiling water.

  3. Mix the corn starch with a little cold milk and stir it into the saucepan.

  4. Cook until it boils for 2 minutes.

  5. Beat the egg yolks with a spoonful of cold milk and stir them in.

  6. Remove from heat and stir in the sherry wine.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites with 2 teaspoons of sugar until stiff, then fold them in.

  2. Serve with sponge cake.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  3. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sherry + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites, whipped stiff, add lightness and airy structure.
Corn starch
Starch swells when heated and thickens the custard so it holds its body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilise the beaten egg whites.
Sherry wine
Adds a fortified wine flavour that gives the custard its distinctive taste.
Rich sweet milk
Provides the liquid base and richness that the custard sets from.

The step that matters

Cook until it boils for 2 minutes. Cornstarch needs to reach a full boil to thicken fully; stopping early leaves a thin custard. Egg yolks added after this point must be kept from overheating, or they can scramble and turn grainy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, wine, milk, sugar, corn, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, wine, milk, sugar, corn, egg. 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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