Name: Silver Lake Custard
Ingredients: 2 pounds sponge cake; 3 pints cream or rich milk; ½ cup Madeira wine; sugar to taste; 6-8 large strawberries (optional); white sugar for sprinkling

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

Bake the sponge cake in a square pan and place it in a deep dish.
In a bowl, combine the cream or milk, Madeira wine, and sugar to taste.
Saturate the sponge cake completely with the cream mixture.

Assemble and serve

Prepare an island as described in another recipe.
Using a tablespoon, place spoonfuls of the island on top of the cake without touching.
If in strawberry season, add strawberries on each spoonful just before serving.
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.

Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Cream + madeira winetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together146 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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 that soaks up the cream mixture and gives the dish its body.
Cream or rich milk: Supplies fat and moisture that make the custard rich and soft.
Madeira wine: Adds a fortified, aromatic flavour that complements the sweet cream.

“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.