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Custard Cream

A sweet custard made from cream, lemon peel, cinnamon, sugar, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Custard Cream

Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Custard Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the cream

  1. Boil the cream with the lemon peel, cinnamon, and sugar.

  2. Beat the egg yolks in a separate bowl.

  3. Gradually mix the egg yolks with the cream mixture.

Thicken the custard

  1. Simmer gently on the fire, stirring until it thickens.

  2. Remove from heat the moment it begins to boil.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as their proteins set on gentle heat, giving it body.
Cream
Provides richness and fat, giving the custard a smooth, creamy texture.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the cream and yolks.
Lemon peel
Adds bright citrus aroma that infuses into the hot cream.
Cinnamon
Adds warm spiced aroma that infuses into the hot cream.

The step that matters

Remove from heat the moment it begins to boil. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set, but if the custard gets too hot it can curdle or turn grainy. Stirring gently and stopping at the first boil keeps it smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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