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Dessert

Cup Custard

A custard made by mixing egg, sugar, salt, nutmeg, and sweet milk, baked in a cup and served cold.

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

Why it works: Nutmeg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,685 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cup Custard

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Mix the custard

  1. Break the egg into a coffee cup.

  2. Add sugar, salt, and nutmeg, and beat thoroughly.

  3. Fill the cup with sweet milk.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered cup.

  2. Place the cup in a pan of boiling water, reaching nearly to the top.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until set.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill and serve cold.

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. Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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
Its proteins coagulate when heated, setting the liquid into a firm custard.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base, providing moisture and a soft, creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the egg and milk.

The step that matters

Place the cup in a pan of boiling water. The water bath moderates the oven's heat so the egg proteins set gently. Without it, the custard can overheat, turn grainy or curdled, and develop a rough, pocked surface.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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