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Dessert

Burnt Cream

A custard dessert made with milk, cornstarch, brown sugar, walnuts, and topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Burnt Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the cornstarch until well combined.

  3. Add the broken walnuts.

Caramelise the sugar

  1. In another saucepan, heat the brown sugar until it is very dark.

  2. Carefully add the thickened milk to the browned sugar and mix well.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it set.

  2. Decorate with walnuts around the edge and a walnut on top, then serve with whipped 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Milk + walnuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + creamtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into the creamy body of the dessert.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the set custard its firm, sliceable texture.
Brown sugar
Caramelises when heated dark, giving the dessert its bitter-sweet, burnt flavour and colour.
Walnuts
Add a crunchy texture and nutty flavour that contrasts with the smooth custard.

The step that matters

Heating the brown sugar until very dark. Sugar passes from amber to burnt quickly and then turns bitter, so it must be watched closely and removed from heat at the right colour. Adding the milk to very hot sugar can also cause it to splatter, so it should be added carefully.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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