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Dessert

Italian Custard

A chilled custard made with egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice, and topped with whipped egg whites and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Italian Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks until creamy.

  2. Add sugar and lemon juice, continuing to beat until thickened like cream.

  3. Pour the mixture into custard glasses.

Top and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then fold in a little currant jelly until evenly colored.

  2. Heap the whipped egg whites on top of the custard in the glasses.

  3. Chill in the refrigerator and serve very cold.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Lemon + curranttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Egg + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Yolks thicken into a creamy custard, while whipped whites form a light, airy topping.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and thickens the yolk mixture as it is beaten.
Currant jelly
Adds fruity sweetness and colors the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Beating the egg yolks with sugar and lemon juice until thickened like cream. Beating incorporates air and gently thickens the yolks. Under-beating leaves a thin custard that will not hold its shape under the topping.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, lemon. 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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