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Dessert

Boiled Custards

A custard made by boiling milk with lemon peel and cinnamon, then combining with cream and egg yolks, finished with peach water and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Boiled Custards

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 ↓

Boiled Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the milk with lemon peel and cinnamon until flavored.

  2. Mix the cream and beaten egg yolks in a bowl.

  3. Sweeten the flavored milk to taste.

  4. Pour the sweetened milk into the cream mixture.

  5. Stir the mixture well.

Cook and finish

  1. Simmer the mixture.

  2. Stir the mixture continuously in one direction.

  3. Continue until it thickens without boiling.

  4. Add peach water and brandy or ratafia 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. Cinnamon + peachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 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 with gentle heat, and add richness.
Cream
Adds fat and body, giving the custard a smooth, rich texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the egg yolks thicken into custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the flavors of citrus and spice.

The step that matters

Continue until it thickens without boiling. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if the custard boils they can curdle and turn grainy. Stirring constantly in one direction keeps the heat even and prevents lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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