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Dessert

Boiled Custard

A custard made by boiling milk, thickening with corn starch, adding beaten eggs, and topping with whipped egg whites.

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

Boiled Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat a pint of milk in a tin pail placed in a kettle of boiling water.

  2. Mix corn-starch with a little cold milk in a cup.

  3. Separate the eggs.

  4. Beat the yolks with the sugar.

  5. Combine the milk and corn-starch mixture with the yolks.

  6. Add the egg mixture to the boiling milk.

  7. Stir until thickened.

  8. Let the custard cool in a cool place.

Make the floating whites

  1. In a separate pan, bring water to a boil.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of the egg whites into the boiling water.

  4. Remove the egg whites with a skimmer.

Finish and serve

  1. Add flavoring to the custard.

  2. Pour the custard into a serving dish.

  3. Place the egg whites on top of 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 + 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. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into the custard.
Corn-starch
Thickens the custard as it heats, giving it body.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the custard; whites are set in water to make soft floating islands.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the richness of the yolks.

The step that matters

Stir until thickened. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated, and the starch needs steady heat and stirring to thicken evenly. Keep the custard below a simmer and stir constantly.

“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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