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Dessert

A Finer Baked Custard

A custard made by boiling milk with lemon rind, sugar, and salt, then mixing with eggs and cream, flavored with brandy, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

A Finer Baked Custard

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard base

  1. In a saucepan, gently boil the milk, salt, lemon rind, and sugar for 5 minutes.

  2. Gradually stir the hot mixture into the beaten egg yolks and egg whites.

  3. Strain the mixture and add the cream.

  4. Let it cool, then flavor with brandy or ratafia.

Bake

  1. Pour into small well-buttered cups and bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) for 10 to 12 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.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Brandy + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg proteins set as the custard bakes, giving it a firm yet tender body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base, and its proteins help the custard set gently.
Cream
Adds fat, making the custard richer and smoother on the palate.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and softens the texture of the set custard.
Lemon rind
Its oils add a bright citrus aroma to the warm milk.

The step that matters

Bake slowly at a low temperature. Egg proteins coagulate under heat. Too hot or too long, the custard can overset, turn grainy, or weep liquid, so gentle heat keeps it silky.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg, cream, brandy, butter. 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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