Skip to main content
Dessert

Pastry Cream

A thickened cream custard flavored with cinnamon, lemon peel, orange flower water, and sweetened with sugar, used as pastry filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Pastry Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cream, cinnamon, lemon peel, flour, butter, egg yolks, beaten egg whites, sugar, and orange flower water.

  2. Heat the mixture over medium heat, stirring until it begins to thicken.

  3. Add the ratafias and pounded citron, mixing well.

Shape and fry

  1. Let the mixture cool completely, then cut it into desired shapes.

  2. Dip each piece into raw egg yolk, then coat with breadcrumbs.

  3. Fry in boiling lard until lightly colored, then drain and serve hot.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they set with heat and add richness.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help the mixture hold its body while cooking.
Flour
Thickens the cream so it sets firm enough to cut into shapes.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavors.
Cream
Forms the rich base of the custard.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool completely before cutting. A warm custard is too soft to hold its shape. Cooling lets the egg and flour thickening set fully, so the pieces keep their form when dipped and fried.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

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

More pastry cream recipes

Puff 5Chocolate 3 See all 52 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes