Skip to main content
Dessert

Spanish Cream

A gelatin-based custard flavored with brandy and orange juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Brandy and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,706 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Spanish Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Soak the gelatine in the milk for 1 hour.

  2. Heat the mixture until it comes to a boil.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and sugar, then simmer for about 10 minutes.

Finish and flavor

  1. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg whites until foamy.

  2. Flavor with brandy and orange juice.

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. Brandy + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

  2. Milk + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the cream into a soft, sliceable structure as it cools.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the yolks thicken and the gelatine sets.
Egg yolks
Thicken the warm milk base and add richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and balances the richness of the yolks.
Egg whites
Add air and a light, foamy texture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after adding the yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble if the mixture boils hard. A gentle simmer lets them thicken the base smoothly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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

More spanish cream recipes

Pudding 3 See all 231 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes