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Dessert

Soft Custard

A simple custard made with milk, egg yolks, sugar, salt, and optional vanilla.

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

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Soft Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Combine and heat

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, sugar, and salt.

  2. Heat the milk to boiling point.

  3. Slowly add the hot milk to the egg mixture while stirring constantly.

Cook and finish

  1. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan and cook over moderate heat for 3 to 5 minutes, stirring constantly until thickened.

  2. Strain the custard into a cold bowl and add vanilla or other flavoring as desired.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 and provides the moisture that the custard is built on.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set with gentle heat, giving it body and richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the egg yolks.

The step that matters

Cook the custard with constant stirring. Egg yolk proteins thicken at gentle heat, but too much heat or too little stirring can scramble them into lumps. Keep stirring constantly until the custard thickens.

“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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