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Dessert

Spanish Cream

A custard dessert made with milk, gelatin, egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla or lemon flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Spanish Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Soak the gelatin in the milk for 1 hour.

  2. Heat the milk until it is almost boiling, stirring often.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until light.

  4. Stir the egg mixture into the hot milk and heat until it begins to thicken, but do not boil.

  5. Remove from heat and strain through a fine cloth.

Set and serve

  1. When nearly cold, add the flavoring.

  2. Wet a dish or mold in cold water and pour in the mixture to set.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Gelatin + vanillatop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together924 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Gelatin
Sets the cooled custard into a firm, sliceable body that holds its shape.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk as they heat and add richness and a smooth texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the gelatin and egg yolks set and thicken.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and softens the rich flavour of the yolks.

The step that matters

Heat the egg mixture without boiling. Egg yolks thicken as they warm, but if the mixture boils they can curdle and turn grainy. Stop heating as soon as it begins to thicken.

“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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