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Dessert

Silver Lake Custard

A custard dessert made with sponge cake soaked in cream, Madeira wine, and sugar, topped with optional strawberries and sprinkled with white sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Silver Lake Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Bake the sponge cake in a square pan and place it in a deep dish.

  2. In a bowl, combine the cream or milk, Madeira wine, and sugar to taste.

  3. Saturate the sponge cake completely with the cream mixture.

Add the island

  1. Prepare an island as described in another recipe.

  2. Using a tablespoon, place the island on top of the cake without letting them touch.

  3. If in strawberry season, add strawberries on each spoonful just before serving.

Finish and serve

  1. Sift white sugar over the top and serve with remaining cream.

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. Cream + madeira winetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Madeira wine + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sponge cake
Forms the base and absorbs the cream mixture, becoming soft and moist as it soaks.
Cream or rich milk
Provides moisture and richness that soften the cake and give the custard its body.
Madeira wine
Adds aroma and a fortified, lightly sweet flavor to the soaking liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the cream mixture, balancing the richness and wine.

The step that matters

Saturate the sponge cake completely. Sponge cake is porous and soaks up liquid through its crumb. If the cream mixture is not spread evenly and fully absorbed, dry patches remain and the flavor and moistness vary from spoonful to spoonful.

“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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