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Dessert

Baked Custards

A custard made with cream, spices, eggs, orange flower water, and sherry, baked in cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Baked Custards

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the cream with mace and cinnamon.

  2. Let it cool.

  3. In a bowl, mix egg yolks, egg whites, orange flower water, sack, nutmeg, and sugar.

  4. Combine the egg mixture with the cooled cream.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into cups and bake.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Provides richness and fat, giving the baked custard a smooth, soft texture.
Egg yolks
Egg proteins set when heated, thickening the custard into a tender, sliceable structure.
Egg whites
Add protein that helps the custard set firmly as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the savory-spiced eggs and cream.

The step that matters

Let the cream cool before combining. Adding the eggs to very hot cream can scramble them, creating a grainy texture instead of a smooth custard. Cooling the cream first lets the eggs thicken gently during baking.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, cinnamon, egg, orange, sherry, nutmeg, sugar):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, cinnamon, egg, orange, sherry, nutmeg, 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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