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Dessert

Baked Custards

A custard made with cream, spices, eggs, 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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Baked Custards

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 Custards

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 base

  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 and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into cups and bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 fat, giving the custard a smooth, tender body.
Egg yolks
Their proteins set during baking, thickening the custard and giving it structure.
Egg whites
Add protein that sets during baking, helping the custard firm up.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the savoury warmth of the spices.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins set at moderate heat and can turn grainy or watery if overbaked. Remove the custard once it is just firm, since it keeps setting as it cools.

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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