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Dessert

Burnt Cream

A custard made from cream, egg yolks, and sugar, topped with caramelized sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 custard

  1. Boil the cream with the lemon or lime peel.

  2. Sweeten with pounded loaf sugar.

  3. Beat in the egg yolks and whites, arrowroot or flour, orange-flower water, and ratafia.

  4. Strain the cream and let it cool.

  5. Mix the cooled cream with the egg mixture.

  6. Stir over low heat until thickened like custard.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour into a dish and sprinkle sifted sugar on top.

  2. Brown the sugar with a salamander or under a broiler.

  3. Serve cold.

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. Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Arrowroot + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Provides richness and fat, giving the custard a smooth, creamy body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set with gentle heat, giving structure and richness.
Egg whites
Add protein that helps set the custard and give it a lighter structure.
Arrowroot or flour
Stabilizes the custard so it thickens smoothly and holds its set without curdling.
Sifted sugar
Caramelizes under heat to form the brittle, browned crust on top.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat until thickened like custard. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures, and too much heat can scramble the eggs into lumps. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the custard smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Arrowrootthe original
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, lemon, sugar, egg, orange. 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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