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Dessert

Cream Custard

A custard made with milk, egg yolks, sugar, flour, vanilla, topped with stiff egg whites and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cream Custard

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, sugar, and flour.

  3. Pour the egg mixture into the scalded milk, stirring constantly until thickened.

  4. Add vanilla for flavor.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites with 1 tablespoon of sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Pour the custard into a pudding dish.

  3. Spoon the egg white mixture on top of the custard.

  4. Brown the top in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  5. Add 1 teaspoon of jelly to each spoonful of frosting on top.

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 + 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. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 that thickens into the custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set with heat, giving it a rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stiffen the beaten egg whites.
Flour
Adds body and helps stabilise the custard so it thickens smoothly.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the scalded milk. Stirring constantly keeps the egg yolks from curdling. Adding the hot milk gradually and stirring as it heats lets the yolks thicken evenly into a smooth custard rather than scrambled bits.

Swap the vanilla

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, flour):

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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