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Dessert

Creme Frite

A French dessert of fried custard pieces served with a sweet wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creme Frite

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the cream in a saucepan.

  2. Add flour, sugar, and grated lemon peel; stir well.

  3. Let it simmer until the raw flour taste is gone.

  4. Allow the mixture to cool, then mix in the eggs.

  5. Pour the batter onto a floured dish and let it cool completely.

Fry and serve

  1. Cut the cooled mixture into pieces.

  2. Fry the pieces in butter until golden brown.

  3. Sift sugar over the fried pieces and serve with the sauce.

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

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Cream
Forms the rich base that thickens into a set, custard-like batter.
Flour
Thickens the cream so the mixture holds its shape when cooled and cut.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm once cooled.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the outside of the pieces and adds richness.

The step that matters

Simmer until the raw flour taste is gone. Flour starch must be fully cooked to thicken properly and lose its raw, pasty taste. Undercooked starch leaves a floury flavour and a weak set.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, sugar, egg, butter, sauce. 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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