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Dessert

Bavaroise

A chilled French custard dessert made with cream, gelatin, sugar, egg yolks, and vanilla or rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Bavaroise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cream and gelatine

  1. Chill 1 pint of cream in the ice for several hours until thoroughly cold.

  2. Soak the gelatin in cold water for 2 hours.

  3. In a saucepan, heat 1 pint of cream with sugar until it boils.

  4. Pour the boiling cream over the soaked gelatin and stir until dissolved.

  5. Set aside to cool.

Make the custard base

  1. Beat the egg yolks until creamy.

  2. Once the cream mixture is cool, stir in the egg yolks briskly.

  3. Strain the mixture into a bowl and add vanilla or rum to taste.

  4. Chill the mixture in the ice.

Set and serve

  1. Whip the remaining chilled pint of cream to stiff peaks.

  2. Fold the whipped cream into the cooled mixture gently.

  3. Rinse 2 molds or 1 large mold with cold water.

  4. Fill the molds with the mixture.

  5. Set aside to harden.

  6. Turn out the Bavaroise.

  7. Serve with cream or whipped-cream sauce.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cream
Whipped and folded in for a light, airy texture and rich mouthfeel.
Gelatine
Sets the cooled mixture so it holds its shape when turned out.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard with fat and emulsifiers, giving body and a smooth texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the cream and yolks.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the cooled cream mixture. If the cream mixture is still hot, the yolks can scramble instead of blending smoothly. Cooling it first keeps the custard silky.

“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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