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Dessert

Cream Custard

A custard made with cream, butter, egg yolks, and bread crumbs, sweetened with sugar and served with grated loaf sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream Custard

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the custard

  1. Grate the crumb of a baker's loaf finely.

  2. In a pot, combine the grated bread, cream, butter, and egg yolks.

  3. Add sugar to sweeten the mixture.

  4. Heat over low heat until it thickens.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the custard into shallow dishes.

  2. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 30 minutes.

  3. Grate loaf sugar over the custards 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.

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 + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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, giving it a rich, smooth texture.
Cream
Provides moisture and richness, so the custard sets soft and creamy.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and a smooth, tender texture.
Grated bread crumb (in the method)
Soaks up liquid and gives the custard body and structure as it thickens.

The step that matters

Heat over low heat until it thickens. Egg yolks set at moderate temperatures, and high heat can curdle them into a grainy texture. Gentle, steady heat lets the custard thicken smoothly.

“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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