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Dessert

Fried Custard

A custard made from eggs and milk, baked, cut, battered, and fried, then dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fried Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks and flour together with a little of the milk.

  2. Add the rest of the warmed milk and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the sugar, salt, and nutmeg into the mixture.

  4. Bake in a small dish until firm.

  5. Let the custard cool.

Batter and fry

  1. Make a batter with the remaining milk, 1 egg, and 2 tablespoons of flour, and mix until smooth.

  2. Add the egg whites from the custard, grated lemon rind, and a little salt to the batter.

  3. Cut the cooled custard into pieces.

  4. Dip each piece in the batter.

  5. Fry in deep boiling fat for 2 minutes.

  6. Serve with powdered sugar sprinkled over the fried 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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Egg yolks set the custard firm, and the egg in the batter helps it coat and hold together.
Flour
Thickens the custard and gives the batter body so it clings to the pieces.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, which sets as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the custard and balances the richness of the fried coating.

The step that matters

Cool the custard fully before cutting and dipping. Custard must be firm and cold to hold its shape. Warm or soft custard breaks apart when dipped in batter and can lose its structure in hot fat.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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