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Dessert

Richer Custard

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

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 until it is flavored.

Combine the custard base

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

  2. Once the milk is flavored, sweeten it to taste and pour it into the cream mixture, stirring well.

Cook the custard

  1. Simmer the custard until it thickens, stirring continuously in one direction. Do not let it boil.

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base and carries the lemon and cinnamon flavor through the custard.
Cream
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and a smooth, velvety texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as their proteins set during gentle heating.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the richness of the cream and yolks.

The step that matters

Simmer gently and do not boil. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set, but high heat makes them curdle or scramble. Stirring constantly in one direction and keeping the heat low lets the custard thicken evenly and stay smooth.

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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