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Mutton Custard

A custard made from mutton suet, milk, flour, cinnamon, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mutton Custard

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Shred the mutton suet very fine.

  2. In a double boiler, combine the suet, cinnamon, and milk, reserving ½ cup of milk.

  3. Cook for one hour, then strain the mixture.

  4. Return the strained liquid to the double boiler and place on the fire.

  5. Mix the flour with the reserved cold milk to form a smooth paste, then stir it into the hot mixture.

  6. Add the salt and cook for ten minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the custard to the patient, offering about ½ pint every four to five hours.

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + muttontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together814 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Flour + muttontop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 of the custard and carries the suet and cinnamon flavour.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquid into a smooth, spoonable custard when stirred in hot.
Mutton suet
Adds richness and fat, giving the custard body and a savoury mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour paste into the hot mixture. Flour mixed first with cold milk forms a smooth paste that disperses evenly. Adding it dry or lumpy to hot liquid causes clumps, because starch grains swell on contact with heat before they can be separated.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Cuminfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, mutton. 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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