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Cheesecakes, Custauds, &C

A custard made with rice flour, milk, egg yolks, and optional brandy, sweetened with cinnamon and bay leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cheesecakes, Custauds, &C

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a bowl, mix rice flour with cold milk until smooth.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks to the rice mixture.

  3. Combine the cold mixture with boiling milk, stirring until it thickens without boiling.

Finish

  1. Pour into a pan and stir until cool.

  2. Add a spoonful of brandy, ratafia, or orange-flower water.

  3. Sweeten with cinnamon and bay leaves to taste.

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. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. 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

Rice flour
Starch swells when heated with liquid, thickening the custard into a smooth body.
Egg yolks
Yolk proteins set on gentle heating, adding richness and helping the custard firm up.
Milk
Provides the liquid base, moisture, and creamy texture of the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the flavor of the milk and eggs.

The step that matters

Combine the cold mixture with boiling milk. Adding the mixture gradually while stirring tempers the eggs and starch. If it boils, the egg yolks can scramble and the custard turns grainy rather than smooth and thick.

“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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