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Dessert

Spanish Cream

A chilled gelatin-based custard made with milk, eggs, and sugar, flavored to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Spanish Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dissolve the gelatin in 2½ cups of milk for 2½ hours.

  2. Add 1 pint of cold milk and heat on the stove until scalding (do not boil).

Make the custard

  1. Separate the eggs; beat the yolks and add 5 tablespoons of sugar.

  2. Beat the egg whites and add 6 tablespoons of sugar.

  3. Stir the yolk mixture into the scalding milk, then fold in the beaten egg whites.

Chill and serve

  1. Refrigerate overnight in a cool place.

  2. Add flavoring to taste before serving.

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 + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Gelatine
Sets the milky mixture into a soft, sliceable cream as it cools.
Milk
Forms the body of the cream and carries the flavour.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the custard, while whipped whites add lightness and airiness.
White sugar
Sweetens the cream and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Stir the yolks into the scalding milk. Egg yolks scramble and curdle if exposed to very hot liquid too quickly. Stirring the yolks with some warm milk first, and keeping the milk below boiling, helps the custard stay smooth and thick.

“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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