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Dessert

Blackberry Jam Custards

A custard baked with eggs, blackberry jam, sugar, butter, and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Blackberry and butter work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 522 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Blackberry Jam Custards

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and bake the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix the eggs, blackberry jam, sugar, and melted butter until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a prepared pastry shell.

  3. Bake until set, about 25-30 minutes.

Top and serve

  1. Top with meringue or cream icing if using only egg yolks.

  2. You may substitute raspberries or strawberries for the blackberry jam.

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. Blackberry + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together522 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Blackberry + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and give it structure as they bake.
Blackberry jam
Provides the sweet fruit flavour and colour of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds to its tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a softer, smoother filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves the custard runny, while overbaking makes it grainy and weepy, so check for a set centre rather than relying only on the timer.

Swap the blackberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Blackberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, 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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