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Dessert

Cream Custard

A sweet custard made with butter, flour, egg yolks, sugar, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and cream it together with the flour.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and add the sugar in a separate bowl.

  3. Scald the milk in a pot.

  4. Add the flour and butter mixture to the milk.

Cook and finish

  1. Add the sugar and egg yolks to the mixture.

  2. Cook in a double boiler until thick, stirring frequently.

  3. Add your choice of flavoring before serving.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 set and add richness to its texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the custard becomes smooth and firm.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the custard smooth and rich in mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds body to its texture.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the thickened custard is made from.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler until thick, stirring frequently. Egg yolks can curdle or turn grainy if overheated. Gentle indirect heat and frequent stirring let the yolks thicken the custard evenly without scrambling.

“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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