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Custard Patties

Custard patties are puff pastry rounds filled with candied cherries and sweetened custard, topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Custard Patties

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pastry

  1. Roll out the puff pastry to ¼ inch thick.

  2. Cut the pastry into 3‑inch rounds with a cutter.

  3. Use a smaller cutter (2 inches) to press halfway through each round.

  4. Place the rounds on a baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes at 400 °F (200 °C).

Fill and decorate

  1. Remove the centers, place 2 candied cherries in each, and fill with sweetened stiff custard.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff, then add sugar and flavoring.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a piping bag and decorate the tops of each patty.

  4. Return the patties to the oven until browned.

  5. Serve cold or hot.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Puff pastry
Its layers of fat and dough puff apart in the oven, forming the light, flaky case.
Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff foam, they add airy structure to the decorative topping.
Stiff custard
Its thick, set texture holds the filling in place and gives the patties a creamy body.
Candied cherries
Their sugar adds sweetness and a chewy, concentrated fruit flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the whipped egg whites and helps them hold a stable, glossy foam.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped until they form firm peaks; under-whipped whites stay runny and will not hold the piped decoration, while over-whipped whites turn grainy and collapse. Sugar added after whipping helps stabilise the foam.

“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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