Skip to main content
Dessert

Sweet Darioles

A custard tart made with Madeira, citron peel, butter, milk, eggs, sugar, short pastry, cream, greengage jam, and pink‑tinted whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sweet Darioles

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard

  1. Mix the crumbs, milk, sugar, chopped citron, and butter in a saucepan, then cook for a few minutes.

  2. Cool the mixture, then add the yolks of 4 eggs, the whites of 2 eggs, the cream, and your choice of flavoring.

Bake and serve

  1. Line small moulds with short pastry, prick the bottoms, and fill them three‑quarters full with the mixture.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  3. Once cooled, turn out the dariole, top each with a little greengage jam, and a spot of whipped cream tinted pink.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 firm, sliceable filling and add richness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that softens the crumbs into a smooth custard.
Cream
Adds richness and a tender, silky texture to the set custard.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavour to the cooked mixture.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the citron peel.
Citron peel
Contributes a bittersweet citrus aroma and flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Baking until just set. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the custard runny and overbaking makes it grainy, weepy and rubbery. Stop when the centre barely wobbles, since it firms further as it cools.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes