Skip to main content
Dessert

Custard Gems

A custard cake made with cornmeal, flour, butter, milk, eggs, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Custard Gems

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately brisk oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C) and grease gem pans.

  2. Separate the yolks and whites of the eggs.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks until thick and lemon-colored.

  2. Add melted butter, sugar, salt, and milk to the yolks and mix well.

  3. Sift in the flour and cornmeal, then beat until smooth.

  4. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites and baking powder.

  5. Pour the batter into the prepared pans.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for about 40 minutes until golden brown.

  2. Serve immediately; they should have a thin layer of custard beneath the crust.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the custard layer, and whipped whites lift the batter for a light crumb.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the gems their structure.
Cornmeal
Adds a coarser, grainy texture and structure to the gems.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form the thin custard layer beneath the crust.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the gems rise and become lighter.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, tenderising the crumb and flavouring the batter.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the egg whites. Overmixing knocks out the air whipped into the whites, so the gems turn dense instead of light.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes