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Dessert

Egg Custard

A simple custard made from egg yolk, cream, water, and salt, baked in a buttered tin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Egg Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolk slightly.

  2. Add cream, water, and salt.

  3. Mix well.

  4. Pour into a small buttered tin mold.

Bake and set

  1. Place the mold in a pan of hot water.

  2. Bake until firm.

  3. Cool.

  4. Remove from the mold.

  5. Cut into fancy shapes.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 yolk
Sets into a firm, tender custard as it heats and its proteins coagulate.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the custard a softer, smoother texture.
Water
Dilutes the egg so the custard stays moist and sets more gently.

The step that matters

Bake until firm. Egg proteins set gradually with gentle heat. Overbaking forces them to tighten and squeeze out water, leaving the custard grainy and weeping. The water bath moderates the heat, so the custard should be removed once it is just firm.

“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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