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Dessert

Soft Custard

A simple custard made from eggs, sugar, salt, and scalded milk, cooked until thickened.

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

Why it works: Egg and milk 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 ↓

Soft Custard

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs slightly.

  2. Add sugar and salt to the eggs.

  3. Gradually stir in the scalded milk.

  4. Cook in a double boiler until thickened or until the spoon is coated.

Finish

  1. Strain immediately, cool, and flavor as desired.

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and milk 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

Eggs
Thicken the custard as they set during gentle cooking, giving it body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the savory richness of the eggs and milk.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a smooth custard.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler until thickened. Egg proteins set at moderate heat, and overheating causes them to curdle or scramble, leaving a grainy texture. Gentle heat in a double boiler keeps the custard smooth, and the coated-spoon test shows when it is thick enough.

“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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