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Dessert

Soft Custard

A custard made with milk, egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Soft Custard

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 ↓

Soft Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat 1½ cups of milk in a double boiler.

  2. Beat 3 egg yolks in a bowl.

  3. Add ½ cup cold milk and ¼ cup sugar to the egg yolks and mix well.

Make the custard

  1. Pour the egg mixture into the hot milk and cook until the custard coats the back of a spoon.

  2. Strain the custard, flavor with vanilla extract, and serve cold.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they cook and give it a rich, smooth texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the egg yolks set into a custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the egg yolks.

The step that matters

Cook until the custard coats the back of a spoon. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but if the custard gets too hot it can curdle or scramble. Cooking gently in a double boiler and checking the coating on a spoon helps reach the right thickness without overheating.

“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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