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Dessert

Boiled Custard

A custard made with milk, cream, eggs, bitter almonds, sugar, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and coriander match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,498 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Custard

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the milk with lemon peel, coriander seeds, and cinnamon for 5 minutes.

  2. Mix in the pounded bitter almonds and loaf sugar.

  3. Combine with the cream, egg yolks, and beaten egg whites.

  4. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

Cook and finish

  1. Stir over low heat until it begins to thicken.

  2. Remove from heat and continue stirring until nearly cold.

  3. Add the brandy and mix well.

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 + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,498 recipes

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

  2. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Coriander + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,635 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set gently with heat, giving it a rich body.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help the mixture set with a softer, airier texture.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the custard a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a custard.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the eggs and cream.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat until it begins to thicken. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures, and high heat can scramble the eggs into curds. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the custard smooth as it thickens.

Swap the coriander

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, cinnamon, almond, sugar, cream, egg. 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 custard recipes

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