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Dessert

Breakfast Custard

A custard made from sweet milk and eggs, baked in a water bath and served with tomato, mushroom, or cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Breakfast Custard

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Beat the eggs until light and stir them into the milk.

  3. Add a pinch of salt and mix well.

  4. Butter a pint bowl and pour the mixture into it.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the bowl in a tin of hot water and bake for 20 minutes.

  2. Turn the custard onto a hot plate and serve with tomato sauce, mushroom sauce, or cream sauce.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the milk into a soft, sliceable custard as they cook.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into custard.

The step that matters

Place the bowl in a tin of hot water and bake. The hot water bath surrounds the custard with gentle, even heat. Eggs that cook too fast or too hot curdle and turn grainy, so the water bath helps keep the texture 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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