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Dessert

A Finer Baked Custard

A custard made with milk, sugar, eggs, lemon rind, cream, and flavored with brandy or ratafia, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

A Finer Baked Custard

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard base

  1. In a saucepan, gently boil the milk, salt, lemon rind, and sugar for 5 minutes.

  2. Gradually stir the hot mixture into the well-beaten egg yolks.

  3. Strain the mixture and add the cream.

Flavor and bake

  1. Let it cool, then flavor with brandy or ratafia.

  2. Pour into small well-buttered cups and bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) for 10 to 12 minutes.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

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

  5. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken and set the custard as they cook gently with the warm milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a smooth custard.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, silkier texture through its fat.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the richness of the eggs and cream.
Lemon rind
Adds bright citrus aroma as it infuses into the warm milk.
Brandy or ratafia
Adds aroma and flavor to the custard after it has cooled.

The step that matters

Gradually stir the hot mixture into the egg yolks. Adding the hot liquid slowly, while whisking, warms the yolks gradually so they thicken smoothly. Pouring it in all at once can scramble the eggs and leave lumps in the custard.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg, cream, brandy. 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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