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Dessert

Boiled Custards

A custard made by boiling milk with lemon peel and cinnamon, then mixing with cream, egg yolks, and sweetening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Boiled Custards

Why it works: Cinnamon and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 625 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Boiled Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk with lemon peel and cinnamon until fragrant.

  2. Sweeten the milk to taste.

  3. Mix the cream and beaten egg yolks in a bowl.

  4. Pour the milk into the cream mixture and stir well.

  5. Simmer the mixture over low heat.

  6. Stir continuously until it thickens, but do not let it boil.

  7. Remove from heat.

Flavour and finish

  1. Stir in the peach water and brandy or ratafia.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cinnamon + peachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set gently with heat, and add richness.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and body, giving the custard a smooth, rich texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the yolks thicken into custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the richness of the cream and yolks.

The step that matters

Simmer gently and do not let it boil. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the custard boils, the proteins curdle and it turns grainy. Stirring constantly spreads the heat evenly and prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cinnamon, cream, egg, sugar, peach, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, cream, egg, sugar, peach, brandy. 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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