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Dessert

Ratafia or Scalded Cream

A sweet cream dessert flavored with bay leaves, peach leaves, egg yolks, sugar, brandy, and scalded over low heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Ratafia or Scalded Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the cream

  1. Boil the bay leaves and peach or nectarine leaves in 1 pint of cream.

  2. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

Finish the custard

  1. Add the beaten and strained egg yolks, sugar, and brandy, stirring quickly.

  2. Scald the mixture over low heat until thick, stirring constantly.

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

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

  2. Peach + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together339 recipes

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

  3. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

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

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 gently set during scalding, giving it a rich, custard-like body.
Cream
Provides the rich fat and body that carries the leaf flavour and sets into a smooth custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the richness of the cream and yolks.
Brandy
Adds aromatic flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Scalding the mixture over low heat until thick. Egg yolks thicken by gently setting as their proteins coagulate. Too much heat or too little stirring can curdle the yolks into grainy lumps, so keep the heat low and stir constantly.

Swap the peach

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

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

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