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Dessert

Without Gelatine

A chilled custard made from cream, sugar, and stiff egg whites, folded together and set to cool.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Without Gelatine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Sweeten the cream with sugar and flavor to taste.

  2. Beat the cream until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  4. Fold the beaten egg whites into the cream.

Set

  1. Pour the mixture into a cake and set it to cool.

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

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

  3. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Pure cream
Provides richness and the base that holds the custard's body.
Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff froth, they add air and lift to the mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and helps it dissolve smoothly into the base.

The step that matters

Fold the beaten egg whites into the cream. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whipped egg whites. Stirring vigorously would deflate the foam and leave the custard dense.

“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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