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Dessert

Artificial Cream No. 1

A thickened milk product made with sugar, egg yolks, corn starch, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Artificial Cream No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Combine half of the milk with all the sugar in a bright granite kettle.

  2. Mix the corn starch with a teacup of the remaining milk.

  3. Add the yolks to the corn starch mixture.

  4. Stir the mixture thoroughly.

Make the custard

  1. Bring the milk and sugar to a boil.

  2. Pour a cup of the boiling mixture into the corn starch and egg mixture.

  3. Pour this mixture back into the boiling milk.

  4. Stir briskly.

  5. Remove from heat immediately.

  6. Add the remaining cold milk.

Freeze

  1. Strain into the freezer.

  2. Freeze when cool.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 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 liquid base of the cream and carries the sugar and starch.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the texture of the frozen cream.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the custard as they cook.
Corn starch
Thickens the mixture as it heats, giving body to the cream.

The step that matters

Remove from heat immediately. Once the starch has thickened the mixture, continued heating can scorch the milk and curdle the egg yolks. Stopping promptly keeps the custard smooth before the cold milk is added.

“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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