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Dessert

Richer Custard

A custard made with milk, cream, egg yolks, sugar, lemon peel, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Richer Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Flavor the milk

  1. Boil the milk with lemon peel and cinnamon.

  2. Once the milk is flavored, sweeten it to taste.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix the cream and beaten egg yolks.

  2. Pour the milk into the cream mixture, stirring well.

  3. Simmer the custard until it thickens, stirring continuously in one direction.

  4. If desired, use 1 quart of cream instead of milk for a richer custard.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Yolks thicken the custard as their proteins set with gentle heat, giving a smooth body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the yolks and cream thicken into custard.
Cream
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, velvety texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the rich dairy and egg flavors.

The step that matters

Simmering the custard. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with heat, but if the custard gets too hot it can curdle and turn grainy. Keep the heat gentle and stir steadily so the yolks cook evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, cream, egg, 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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