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Dessert

Burnt Cream

Burnt Cream is a custard dessert made with clarified sugar, ratafia biscuit, lemon peel, milk, cream, eggs, and orange flower.

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 cream

  1. Heat 2 tablespoons of clarified sugar in a stewpan until it begins to burn and turn brown. Shake the pan.

  2. Add 1 ounce of ratafia biscuit, a small piece of lemon peel, and sugar and orange flower to taste to the pan. Stir together the contents of the pan.

  3. Add 1 pint of boiled new milk to the pan. Simmer the mixture for 20 minutes.

  4. Remove the milk from the heat. Mix in ½ pint of good thick cream.

  5. In a separate bowl, beat 4 eggs and 2 egg yolks. Add the beaten eggs to the mixture.

  6. Strain the mixture through a tammy twice.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease small molds with clarified butter. Fill the molds with the cream mixture.

  2. Place a large stewpan with a little water on the fire. Bring the water to a gentle boil.

  3. Add the filled molds to the boiling water. Cover the stewpan tightly. Cook using the bain-marie method until set.

  4. Remove the molds from the water. Wipe the molds. Turn the molds 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

Eggs
Set the custard into a firm, sliceable texture as they cook.
Egg yolks
Add richness and smoothness to the custard through extra fat and emulsifiers.
Thick cream
Adds fat for a rich, velvety texture in the custard.
New milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, carrying the flavours.
Clarified sugar
Caramelises when heated, giving the custard its burnt, brown flavour.

The step that matters

Heating the sugar until it browns. Sugar darkens quickly once it starts to burn, so it can turn bitter if left too long. Shaking the pan helps it colour evenly. The flavour depends on stopping at the right point.

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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