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Dessert

A Savory Breakfast Custard

A custard made with bread crumbs, optional minced chicken, egg, milk, salt, and pepper, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

A Savory Breakfast Custard

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Lightly fill a custard cup with bread crumbs.

  2. If desired, add a little minced chicken.

  3. Beat the egg and mix in the milk, salt, and pepper.

  4. Pour the mixture over the crumbs in the cup.

Bake

  1. Bake in a pan of hot water at 400°F (200°C) for a few minutes until the eggs are lightly cooked.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + chickentop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg
Sets the custard as it cooks, giving it a soft, tender body.
Milk
Adds moisture and creates the liquid that the egg sets into a custard.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the egg and milk mixture, giving the custard a soft, bread-like base.

The step that matters

Baking in a water bath. Baking the cup in a pan of hot water surrounds the custard with gentle, even heat. This keeps the egg from overcooking, which would make it grainy, watery, or rubbery. Remove it once the egg is just set.

“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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