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Dessert

Birch's Receipt for Mock Cream

A layered custard dessert made with milk, egg yolk, sugar, lemon, brandy, sweet wine, cream, sponge biscuits, and fruit preserves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Birch's Receipt for Mock Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix the flour with the milk and simmer for 5 minutes to remove the rawness.

  2. Beat the egg yolk and stir it into the boiling milk.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. In a large bowl, mix the sugar, lemon juice, grated lemon peel, brandy, sweet wine, and cream.

  5. Whisk the mixture well.

  6. Remove the froth with a skimmer, placing it on a sieve.

  7. Continue whisking until you have enough whipped cream.

  8. Chill the whipped cream for 3-4 hours.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a deep dish, layer the sponge biscuits, ratafia, almonds, nutmeg, lemon peel, currant jelly, raspberry jam, sweet wine, and a little brandy.

  2. Once the biscuits have absorbed the liquid, pour over the custard made thicker than for apple pie.

  3. When ready to serve, top with the whipped cream.

  4. Sprinkle with nonpareil comfits.

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. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 milk so the custard sets with body.
Egg yolk
Thickens the custard as it heats and adds richness.
Cream
Adds richness and body, and whips into the light topping.
Sponge biscuits
Soak up the wine and brandy to form the soft base layer.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and the whipped cream.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.

The step that matters

Make the custard thicker than for apple pie. The custard must be thick enough to hold its shape once poured over the soaked biscuits. Egg yolk thickens only as it heats, so overheating can curdle it, while underheating leaves it thin and runny.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, sugar, brandy, wine, cream. 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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