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Dessert

Burnt Custard

A custard made with milk, egg yolks, and sugar, poured over savoy cake slices, topped with whipped egg whites, browned, and garnished with fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and raspberry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,014 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Burnt Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk and let it cool.

  2. Mix the cooled milk with the egg yolks and stir over low heat for a few minutes.

  3. Sweeten the mixture to your taste.

Assemble

  1. Place slices of savoy cake in the bottom of a deep dish and pour the custard over them.

  2. Whip the egg whites to a strong froth and spread it lightly on top of the custard.

  3. Sprinkle sugar over the whipped egg whites.

Brown and serve

  1. Use a salamander or broiler to brown the top until light brown.

  2. Garnish with raspberry marmalade or any preserved fruit.

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 + raspberrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,014 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + raspberrytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,101 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, setting gently as the egg proteins cook.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness through their emulsifying fats and proteins.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms a light, airy topping that browns under heat.
Savoy cake
Soaks up the custard, giving the dish a soft, moist base layer.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, sprinkled on the meringue, helps the top caramelise and brown.

The step that matters

Stir the custard over low heat. Egg yolks thicken gently as their proteins set; too much heat scrambles them into grainy curds, so stir steadily and keep the heat low.

Swap the raspberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar. 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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