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Dessert

Pastry Cream

A custard made with cream, cinnamon, lemon peel, flour, butter, eggs, sugar, orange flower water, ratafias, citron, fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Pastry Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Combine cream, cinnamon, lemon peel, flour, butter, egg yolks, beaten egg whites, sugar, and orange flower water in a saucepan.

  2. Heat the mixture over medium heat, stirring until it begins to thicken.

  3. Add ratafias and pounded citron, mixing well.

  4. Let the mixture cool completely.

Fry and serve

  1. Cut the cooled mixture into desired shapes.

  2. Dip each piece into egg yolk.

  3. Coat each piece with breadcrumbs.

  4. Fry in boiling lard until golden brown.

  5. Drain and serve hot.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they set with heat and add richness.
Flour
Thickens the cream so it holds its shape when cooled and cut.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth texture to the cooked cream.
Cream
Forms the rich base that gives the custard its body.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the flavours.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool completely. The cooked cream must be fully chilled and firm before cutting; warm cream stays soft and loses its shape, and cutting too early makes the pieces collapse in the hot lard.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, cinnamon, lemon, flour, butter, egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, cinnamon, lemon, flour, butter, egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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