Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Renversee

A custard dessert baked upside down in a pan with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Renversee

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard base

  1. Mix the flour with cold milk, then add scalded milk.

  2. Heat in a saucepan, stirring until it thickens.

  3. Remove from heat and add sugar, egg yolks, and lemon extract.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold into the mixture.

  2. Pour into a buttered pan or mold and place in a kettle of boiling water.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until risen.

  4. Let cool, then turn out onto a dish upside down.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the custard holds its structure while it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich and set the custard, adding richness and body to the mixture.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and help it rise in the oven.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that becomes the creamy body of the custard.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the custard a tender texture.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold into the mixture. Under-whipped whites will not hold air, so the mixture will not rise well in the oven. Over-folding deflates the foam, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, sugar, egg, butter. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes