Skip to main content
Dessert

Boiled Corn Starch Custard

A custard made by boiling milk, thickening with corn starch, sweetened with sugar, and finished with beaten eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Boiled Corn Starch Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Thicken the milk

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Mix the corn starch with a little cold milk to make a smooth paste.

  3. Stir the boiling milk into the corn starch mixture.

  4. Return to the saucepan and cook for 10 minutes.

Finish the custard

  1. Sweeten with sugar and add salt.

  2. Stir in the beaten eggs and cook until thickened.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 body of the custard.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard as its granules swell and gelatinize when heated in liquid.
Eggs
Set when heated, adding richness and further thickening to the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the custard.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten eggs and cook until thickened. Egg proteins set when heated, but if the custard gets too hot or boils hard, the eggs can scramble and become grainy. Keep the heat moderate and stir constantly while it 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.

You might also like

Corn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesCorn CakesCorn Cakes22 recipesGreen Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding14 recipes