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A German Custard Pudding-sauce

A sauce made by infusing milk with lemon, cinnamon, vanilla, and sugar, then thickening with egg yolks and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,287 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

A German Custard Pudding-sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. In a saucepan, gently boil the milk or milk and cream with lemon rind, cinnamon, vanilla bean, and sugar until flavored.

  2. Strain the mixture and slowly pour it into the beaten egg yolks mixed with flour, salt, and cold milk. Stir quickly as you add the milk mixture.

Thicken the sauce

  1. Return the sauce to the saucepan and whisk or stir rapidly until it thickens and looks creamy.

  2. Hold the saucepan over the heat, but do not place it directly on the fire.

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. Cinnamon + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  4. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat, giving it a creamy body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavors and becomes the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the richness of the yolks and milk.
Flour
Stabilizes the custard so it is less likely to curdle during thickening.

The step that matters

Hold the saucepan over the heat, but do not place it directly on the fire. Egg yolks scramble when exposed to direct, intense heat. Gentle indirect heat, combined with constant stirring, lets the custard thicken smoothly without curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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