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 the gelatine
Soak the gelatine in cold milk for 2 hours in a cool place.
Stir the soaked gelatine into the boiling milk.
Make the custard
In a separate bowl, beat the sugar into the eggs and add salt.
Stir the egg mixture into the hot milk until it almost boils.
Remove from heat and add the desired flavoring.
Set and serve
Strain the mixture through a sieve into a wet mold and set in a cool place.
Serve with sugar and cream or any cold liquid sauce.
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 + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Gelatine
- Sets the liquid milk mixture into a firm, sliceable cream when chilled.
- Eggs
- Thicken the warm milk mixture and add richness to the set cream.
- Milk
- Forms the base of the cream and gives it a soft, smooth body.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cream and balances the richness of the eggs and milk.
The step that matters
Stir the egg mixture into the hot milk until it almost boils. Eggs thicken when heated, but if the mixture boils it can curdle or turn grainy. Stop just short of boiling so the custard stays smooth and thickened.
“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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