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Dessert

Standing Custard

A custard made by boiling milk, sugar, and isinglass, then adding egg yolks, chilling, and setting in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Standing Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk, sugar, and isinglass together.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Whisk in the beaten egg yolks.

  4. Stir until almost cold.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  2. Place the mold in water until completely cold.

  3. Invert the mold to turn out the custard.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

New milk
Forms the liquid base that the custard sets from.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavour of the custard.
Isinglass
Gelatin-like setting agent that firms the custard as it cools.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the custard, adding richness and body.

The step that matters

Stir until almost cold. Stirring while the custard cools keeps it smooth and evenly textured. If it sets before it is poured into the mold, lumps and an uneven set can result.

“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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