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Dessert

Baked Cajlards

A custard dessert made with cream, eggs, spices, rose water, orange flower water, and sherry, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Cajlards

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the custard

  1. Boil the cream with mace and cinnamon.

  2. Let it cool.

  3. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, egg whites, rose water, orange flower water, sack, nutmeg, and sugar.

  4. Combine the cooled cream with the egg mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour into cups and bake in a moderate oven (350°F or 175°C) until set.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cream
Provides richness and a smooth, tender body once set.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and give it a rich, set texture when baked.
Egg whites
Add structure and help the custard set firm as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the spices and eggs.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg custard sets as its proteins coagulate with heat. Baking until just set gives a smooth texture, while overbaking makes it grainy and watery as the proteins tighten and squeeze out liquid.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, cinnamon, egg, rose, orange, sherry, nutmeg):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, cinnamon, egg, rose, orange, sherry, nutmeg. 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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