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Dessert

Butter Custard Cups

A baked custard made with flour, cream, butter, and sugar, served hot with melted butter, white wine, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Butter Custard Cups

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, cream, melted butter, and sugar until smooth.

  2. Fill custard cups halfway with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until set and lightly golden.

  2. Serve hot with melted butter, white wine, and sugar.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the cream mixture as it heats, giving the custard body and a set structure.
Cream
Provides richness and moisture, and sets softly as it bakes.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps lightly brown the surface.

The step that matters

Bake until set and lightly golden. The flour starch thickens the cream and butter as it heats. Pull the cups once the centre is just set, because baking too long dries the surface and can make the custard grainy or split.

“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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