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English Cream for Eclairs, Cream Pie, Etc

A thick milk-based custard used as filling for éclairs and cream pies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

English Cream for Eclairs, Cream Pie, Etc

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Sift together the flour, sugar, and salt several times.

  3. Dilute the sifted mixture with a little hot milk and mix thoroughly.

Make the custard

  1. Stir the mixture into the rest of the hot milk.

  2. Continue stirring until thickened.

  3. Cover the mixture.

  4. Let it cook for ten minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the eggs and mix in the sugar.

  2. Stir into the hot mixture.

  3. Cook for three to four minutes until the egg is set.

  4. Add the flavoring.

  5. Use the cream.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Barley + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together582 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Barley + vanillatop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

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

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

Barley flour
Its starch thickens the hot milk as it cooks, giving the cream body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that becomes the creamy body of the dish.
Eggs
Their proteins set when heated, thickening the cream and adding richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the set texture of the cream.

The step that matters

Cook for three to four minutes until the egg is set. Egg proteins coagulate when heated, so the cream thickens only at the right temperature. Overheating makes the eggs curdle and turn grainy, while adding hot mixture gradually to the eggs helps prevent scrambling.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

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