Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Burned Custard
Ingredients
Directions
Assemble
Fill a glass bowl nearly full of nice boiled custard.
Make the meringue
Beat the egg whites until perfectly light.
Gradually add the pulverized sugar while beating continuously.
Heap the meringue on top of the custard.
Brown and serve
Brown the meringue with a red-hot iron plate or clean shovel until well browned.
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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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 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 whites
- Beaten into a foam that forms the light, airy meringue topping.
- Pulverized sugar
- Stabilizes the beaten whites and adds sweetness to the meringue.
- Boiled custard
- Forms the rich, smooth base beneath the meringue.
The step that matters
Beat the egg whites until perfectly light. Whites must be beaten to a stiff, stable foam before sugar is added. Under-beaten whites collapse and weep, while the sugar helps hold the foam so the meringue keeps its shape during browning.
“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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