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Dessert

Cold Custard

A chilled dessert made by curdling milk with rennet wine, then served with a cream and wine sauce and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Cold Custard

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cold Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Stir the rennet wine into the milk.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve into dishes.

  3. Keep the dishes in a warm place until the custard hardens.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, mix the cream with a few spoonfuls of white wine and sugar.

  2. Grate nutmeg over both the sauce and the custard 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.

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

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

  2. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Milk
Forms the body of the custard as it sets with the rennet.
Rennet wine
Contains rennet, which coagulates the milk proteins so the custard sets.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty texture to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the flavour.

The step that matters

Keep the dishes in a warm place until the custard hardens. Rennet works best at warm temperatures, and the milk proteins only form a firm set when left undisturbed. Moving or jostling the dishes early can break the forming curd and leave the custard soft or grainy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Peppermintfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, wine, cream, 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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