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Dessert

French Custard Cream

A custard made by infusing milk with lemon rind and powdered sugar, then folded with egg yolks and simmered until firm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

French Custard Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the milk

  1. Heat the milk in a stewpan until it boils.

  2. Add the powdered sugar to the milk.

  3. Add the lemon rind to the milk.

  4. Cover the stewpan and let the mixture infuse for 10 minutes.

Make the custard

  1. Whisk the egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Gradually stir the infused milk into the whisked yolks.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into cups.

Set the custards

  1. Place the cups in a large stewpan with simmering water, covering the bottom by 2 inches.

  2. Let the custards simmer until firm.

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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the custard sets from.
Egg yolks
Thicken and set the custard as they cook, giving it structure.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the yolks.
Lemon rind
Infuses the milk with a bright citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Gradually stir the infused milk into the whisked yolks. Adding hot milk slowly while whisking warms the yolks gently, so they thicken smoothly instead of scrambling into lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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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