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Dessert

Plain Cornflour Mould

A chilled cornflour dessert moulded with jam and almond flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 466 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Plain Cornflour Mould

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Mix the cornflour with a little cold milk until smooth, then stir it into the boiling milk.

  3. Boil for 5 to 6 minutes, stirring well.

  4. Add almond flavoring and cool slightly.

Mould and serve

  1. Rinse a mold with cold water.

  2. Pour in half of the mixture, then add the jam, followed by the remaining mixture.

  3. Let it cool and firm up.

  4. Turn out and serve with additional jam around it.

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. Peach + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cornflour
Thickens the milk into a set, sliceable custard as it cooks and gelatinises.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornflour thickens into the mould.
Sugar
Sweetens the mould and balances the flavour of the almond and jam.
Peach jam
Adds fruity sweetness and a layer of flavour within and around the mould.

The step that matters

Stir the cornflour into the boiling milk. Cornflour must be fully dispersed in cold liquid first, then cooked at a boil for several minutes so its starch swells and thickens. Lumps or undercooked starch leave a grainy, runny mould that will not set firmly.

“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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