Skip to main content
Dessert

Creme Patissiere, or Pastry Cream

A thickened custard made from flour, egg yolks, and optional crumbs, flavored with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 889 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Creme Patissiere, or Pastry Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Gradually add the beaten egg yolks to the flour, stirring briskly.

  2. If desired, substitute with crushed ratifias, macaroons, or stale biscuits.

  3. Add lemon to taste.

  4. Gently boil the mixture for 2–3 minutes, stirring continuously to prevent curdling.

  5. Allow to cool; it can be stored for a long time.

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. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture and enrich it as they set when gently heated.
Fine flour
Stabilises the custard and helps it thicken so it holds its shape.

The step that matters

Gently boil the mixture while stirring continuously. Egg yolks can curdle and turn grainy if overheated or left unstirred. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly, and a brief gentle boil cooks the flour so the cream thickens smoothly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, biscuit):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, biscuit. 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.

More pastry cream recipes

Puff 5Chocolate 3 See all 52 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesBaking Powder BiscuitBaking Powder Biscuit119 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes