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Dessert

Good Baked Custard

A custard made with eggs, milk, sugar, and flavoring, baked and topped with browned egg whites.

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

Good Baked Custard

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the custard

  1. Beat 8 eggs well, reserving 2 egg whites for later.

  2. Combine the beaten eggs with 3 pints of milk, sweetening and flavoring to taste.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 2 hours.

Brown and finish

  1. Beat the reserved egg whites with 2 tablespoons of sugar until stiff.

  2. Spread the beaten egg whites over the baked custard and return to the oven to brown.

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

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

  2. Milk + sugartop 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).

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

Eggs
Set the custard into a firm, sliceable structure as they cook.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that gives the custard its soft, tender texture.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the meringue whites hold their stiff structure.

The step that matters

Baking the custard gently. Egg proteins set at moderate heat; too much heat or time can overcook the custard, making it grainy, weepy, or curdled. A gentle oven keeps it smooth.

“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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