Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓
Burnt Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Make the custard base
Mix the wheat flour with a portion of the cold milk.
Scald the remaining milk and add it to the flour mixture.
Boil the mixture until it thickens.
Add the caramel and serve
In a separate pan, burn the brown sugar until caramelized, then add it to the thickened mixture.
Mould the mixture and serve with whipped cream.
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.
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Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,418 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,373 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 body of the cream and sets into a soft, creamy custard when thickened.
- Wheat flour
- Thickens the milk as it boils, giving the cream structure so it can hold its shape.
- Brown sugar
- Caramelizes to add deep, toasted flavour and colour, and sweetness to the cream.
The step that matters
Burning the brown sugar. Caramelizing sugar is a fine line between deep flavour and bitterness. Heat past the amber stage makes it taste acrid, and the caramel is then added to the thickened mixture, so it needs careful timing.
“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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