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Raspberry Custard

A custard made from raspberries, red currants, sugar, eggs, and cornflour, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Raspberry Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fruit base

  1. Mix the raspberries and red currants with 1 quart of water and cook for 5 to 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the juice through a fine sieve or muslin.

  3. Return the juice to the saucepan, add the sugar, and reheat until boiling.

  4. Thicken the boiling juice with cornflour, then set aside to cool.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs and carefully add them to the cooled fruit juice.

  2. Stir the mixture over low heat until it thickens, but do not let it boil.

Serve

  1. Serve cold in custard glasses or over macaroons or sponge cakes.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

  3. Red currant + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the juice into a custard as they set when gently heated.
Raspberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and colour of the custard.
Red currants
Add tart acidity that balances the sweetness of the fruit.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the fruit.
Cornflour
Thickens the boiling juice so it holds body before the eggs are added.

The step that matters

Stir the custard over low heat without boiling. Egg proteins set gently as they warm; if the mixture boils, they curdle and the custard turns grainy and loses its smooth texture.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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.

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