Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Delicious Custard
Ingredients
Directions
Heat 1 pint of milk in a saucepan.
Brown 1 cup of sugar and add it to the heated milk.
Stir in 1 pint of cold milk and the yolks of 4 eggs.
Beat the 2 egg whites until stiff and place them on top of the custard.
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.
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 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 that the eggs thicken into custard.
- Brown sugar
- Sweetens the custard and adds caramel flavor from browning.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the custard as they set with gentle heat.
- Egg whites
- Beaten until stiff to form a light topping on the custard.
The step that matters
Brown the sugar carefully. Sugar darkens quickly and burns to a bitter taste, so watch it closely. Properly browned sugar gives the custard its caramel flavor.
“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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