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Dessert

Baked Custards

A baked custard made with cream, spices, egg yolks, whites, rose water, orange flower water, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Baked Custards

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Custards

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the custard

  1. Boil the cream with mace and cinnamon until hot.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

  3. Mix in the egg yolks and egg whites.

  4. Add rose water, orange flower water, nutmeg, and sugar to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into cups.

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

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Provides richness and fat, giving the custard a smooth, creamy body.
Egg yolks
Thicken and set the custard as they coagulate with gentle heat, adding richness.
Egg whites
Add protein that helps the custard set firm and hold its shape when baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavour of the eggs and cream.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Baking gently in a moderate oven and stopping once the custard is just set keeps it smooth and tender; overbaking can make it curdle, weep, or turn rubbery.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

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