Name: Baked Custards
Ingredients: 1 pint cream; ½ pint milk; a pinch of mace; a pinch of cinnamon; a small piece of lemon peel; 3 egg yolks; sugar to taste

Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon 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 ↓

Baked Custards

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 the custard

Boil the cream and milk with mace, cinnamon, and lemon peel until combined.
Let the mixture cool.
Mix in the egg yolks and sweeten to taste.

Bake

Pour the mixture into cups, filling them nearly full.
Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 10 minutes.

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.

Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Egg yolks: Egg proteins thicken and set the custard as it heats, giving it a firm, smooth body.
Cream: Cream adds fat, making the custard rich and smooth-textured.
Milk: Milk provides the liquid that the egg proteins set into a custard.
Sugar: Sugar sweetens the custard and balances the richness of the cream.

The step that matters

Bake until just set. Egg proteins set as the custard heats. Overbaking pushes them too far, causing the custard to curdle, weep, or turn grainy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, milk, cinnamon, lemon, egg, sugar):

Nutmegfits better
Cardamomfits better
Gingerfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, cinnamon, lemon, 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.