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Blackberry Jam Custards

A custard made with eggs, blackberry jam, sugar, and butter, baked in a pastry shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Blackberry and butter work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 522 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Blackberry Jam Custards

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs, then mix in the blackberry jam, sugar, and melted butter.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pastry shell.

Bake and top

  1. Bake until set, then cover with meringue.

  2. If using only egg yolks, spread cream icing on top.

  3. You can substitute raspberries or strawberries for the blackberry jam.

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. Blackberry + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together522 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Blackberry + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Eggs bind the filling and set it into a firm custard when baked.
Blackberry jam
Adds fruit flavour, sweetness and moisture to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps its surface brown lightly in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the custard a softer, smoother texture.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins firm as they heat. Overbaking squeezes out liquid, leaving the custard grainy or watery, so bake only until the centre is set.

Swap the blackberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Blackberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter. 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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