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Creams, Custards, &C

A simple custard made with cream or milk, lemon peel, cinnamon, flour, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon 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 ↓

Creams, Custards, &C

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cream or milk, lemon peel, and cinnamon.

  2. Stir in flour and sugar to taste.

  3. Cook over medium heat for 3-4 minutes, stirring constantly.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  2. Let it cool, then turn it out to serve.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Cream or milk
Provides the liquid base, along with fat that gives the custard its richness.
Flour
Its starch swells and thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the custard body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Lemon peel
Its aromatic oils flavour the cream with bright citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Stirring constantly over medium heat. Flour starch must be heated while stirred so it disperses evenly and thickens smoothly. Without constant stirring, the mixture can lump or scorch on the base of the pan.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, cinnamon, flour, sugar. 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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