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Dessert

Good Custard

A custard made with milk, cream, cinnamon, peach leaves, lemon rind, sugar, egg yolks, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 625 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Good Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Combine the milk, cream, cinnamon, peach leaves, and lemon rind in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer the mixture for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture and return it to the saucepan.

  4. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.

Thicken and finish

  1. Beat the egg yolks well.

  2. Gradually mix the beaten yolks into the milk mixture, stirring continuously over low heat until it thickens, but do not let it boil.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the brandy until cool.

  4. Pour the custard into cups and serve.

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. Cinnamon + peachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set over gentle heat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the custard a smooth, velvety texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the yolks thicken into custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the brandy's strong flavour.
Brandy
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the finished custard.

The step that matters

Thickening the yolks over low heat. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the custard boils, the proteins curdle and it turns grainy. Stir constantly over low heat and stop as soon as it coats a spoon.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, cinnamon, peach, sugar, egg, 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.

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