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Dessert

Bich Boiled Custard

A rich custard of cream, sugar and egg yolks, thickened on the stove and flavoured with lemon rind and optional liqueur.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Bich Boiled Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Take ½ cup of cream from 1 quart and simmer it with 4 ounces of sugar and the rind of 1 lemon for a few minutes.

  2. Beat and strain the yolks of 8 eggs, then mix them with the ½ cup of cream.

  3. Stir the simmered cream into the egg mixture and thicken the custard over low heat until it coats the back of a spoon.

  4. For the second custard, pour 1½ cups of boiling cream over the beaten yolks of 12 eggs, sweetened with 3 ounces of sugar.

  5. Add a pinch of salt and thicken the custard as usual.

Flavor and finish

  1. When nearly cold, flavor with 1½ wineglassfuls of noyau, maraschino, or cuirasseau, and add almonds if desired.

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

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

  2. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set with gentle heat, giving it body and richness.
Fresh cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the richness of the yolks and cream.
Lemon rind
Infuses the simmered cream with citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Thicken the custard over low heat. Egg yolk proteins set gradually; too much heat scrambles them into curds, so stir constantly and stop once the custard coats a spoon.

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, lemon, egg):

  1. Pistachiofits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, lemon, 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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