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Dessert

Burnt Cream

A custard dessert made by caramelizing sugar, adding milk, eggs, and flavorings, then baking in a bain‑marie.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Burnt Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the flavoured milk

  1. In a saucepan, heat 2 tablespoons of clarified sugar until it begins to burn and turn brown, then shake it gently.

  2. Add 1 ounce of ratafia biscuit, a small piece of lemon peel, sugar, and orange flower, and stir together.

  3. Pour in 1 pint of boiled whole milk and let it simmer on the stove for 20 minutes.

Make the custard

  1. In another saucepan, beat 4 eggs and 2 egg yolks.

  2. Remove the milk from heat and mix it with ½ pint of heavy cream, then add the egg mixture, straining it through a fine sieve.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease small molds with clarified butter and fill them with the cream mixture.

  2. Place a large saucepan with a little water on the heat, and when it boils gently, add the molds, covering them tightly.

  3. Cook in a bain-marie until set, then remove from water, wipe, and turn out onto a dish.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Clarified sugar
Caramelised sugar gives the cream its burnt colour and bittersweet flavour.
Eggs
As they heat, the eggs set the cream into a firm, sliceable custard.
Egg yolks
Extra yolks add richness and a smoother, silkier set to the custard.
Heavy cream
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture and a softer, creamier set.
Whole milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into custard.

The step that matters

Cook in a bain-marie until set. Gentle, indirect heat from the water bath lets the egg proteins set slowly. Too much heat makes the custard curdle or turn grainy, and overcooking leaves it rubbery.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, biscuit, lemon, milk, cream, egg, 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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