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Dessert

With Cinnamon

A custard made with potato starch, cinnamon, eggs, sugar, and milk, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

With Cinnamon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat together potato starch, cinnamon, eggs, and sugar.

  2. Add milk gradually to create a liquid batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  2. Place the mold in a pan of boiling water for 15 minutes.

  3. Transfer to the oven and bake until cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Potato + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Set the custard into a sliceable structure as their proteins coagulate with heat.
Potato starch
Thickens the batter and gives the baked custard a smooth, tender texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that turns the mixture into a pourable batter and adds moisture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the custard tender.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and flavor to the custard.

The step that matters

Baking in a water bath. The mold sits in hot water so heat reaches the custard gently and evenly. Strong direct heat can overcook the eggs, causing the custard to curdle, weep, or turn rubbery.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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