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Custards

A custard made with cream, mace, cinnamon, eggs, rose water, orange flower water, nutmeg, and sugar, baked in cups.

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

Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the cream with mace and cinnamon.

  2. Let it cool.

  3. Mix in the yolks, whites, rose water, orange flower water, nutmeg, and sugar.

Bake

  1. Bake the mixture in cups.

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

Eggs
Egg proteins set as the custard heats, giving it a firm, sliceable structure.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, making the custard smooth and tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the spices.

The step that matters

Bake the mixture in cups. Egg proteins set with gentle heat. If the custard gets too hot, the eggs tighten too far, causing curdling and a grainy texture instead of a smooth set.

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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