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 the gelatine
Dissolve the gelatine in 2 ½ cups of milk for 2 ½ hours.
Add 1 pint of cold milk and heat on the stove until scalding (do not boil).
Make the custard
Separate the eggs, then beat the yolks and add 5 tablespoons of sugar.
Stir the yolks into the scalding milk.
Beat the egg whites and add 6 tablespoons of sugar.
Fold in the beaten egg whites.
Chill and flavor
Refrigerate overnight.
Flavor to taste.
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.
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Coxe's gelatine
- Sets the liquid milk mixture into a firm, sliceable cream as it chills.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the gelatine and eggs set and thicken.
- Eggs
- Yolks thicken and enrich the custard, while whipped whites add lightness.
- White sugar
- Sweetens the cream and balances the richness of the eggs and milk.
The step that matters
Heat the milk to scalding without boiling. Milk hot enough to scald warms the gelatine and yolks so the mixture thickens evenly. Boiling can curdle the eggs and leave the texture grainy.
“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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