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Dessert

Custard

A sweet custard made with cream or milk, sugar, cinnamon, lemon peel, egg yolks, rose water, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Custard

Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Sweeten the cream or milk with pounded sugar.

  2. Boil with cinnamon and lemon peel.

  3. Strain the mixture and let it cool slightly.

  4. Gradually mix in the beaten egg yolks.

  5. Stir over low heat until thickened.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour into a basin and add rose water and brandy.

  2. Stir occasionally until cold, then serve in glasses or cups.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lemon + rosetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cinnamon + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Sugar and cinnamon 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they set over gentle heat, giving the custard its body.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base that the egg yolks thicken into a custard.
Pounded loaf sugar
Sweetens the base so the custard tastes sweet rather than eggy.
Cinnamon stick
Infuses the warm cream with aromatic spice flavour as it boils.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic citrus oils to the hot cream for a bright background note.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat until thickened. Egg yolks begin to set around 70°C and can scramble if overheated, leaving lumps. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the custard smooth and thick.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, cinnamon, egg, rose, 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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