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Dessert

Spanish Cream

A custard dessert made with milk, eggs, sugar, gelatin, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Spanish Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatin in a cup of cold water for one hour.

  2. In a saucepan, combine 3 pints of milk and bring to a boil.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar and salt in a bowl.

  2. Add 1 pint of boiling milk to the yolks and sugar, stirring well.

  3. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan and cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Remove from heat, add the egg whites, and mix well.

Flavor and mold

  1. Flavor with Price’s extract and pour into molds.

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

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

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

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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 that gives the custard its body and moisture.
Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the custard as they heat and help it set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the set of the custard.
Gelatine
Sets the custard so it holds its shape when unmolded.

The step that matters

Cooking the yolk mixture for 5 minutes. Stirring constantly keeps the egg yolks from overheating and scrambling, while gentle heat thickens the custard evenly.

“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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