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Dessert

Cornfllour Custard

A custard made with milk, egg yolk, cornflour, sugar, and flavouring.

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 ↓

Cornfllour Custard

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pour the milk into a saucepan and heat until nearly boiling.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the cornflour with a spoonful of cold milk until smooth.

  3. Stir the cornflour mixture into the hot milk and continue stirring until it boils.

  4. Let it boil for 2-3 minutes, then remove from heat.

  5. Beat in the egg yolk and your choice of flavouring.

  6. Return to the heat and bring to a boiling point; it is now ready to use.

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

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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 the cornflour thickens into a custard.
Cornflour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells and sets when heated and boiled.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps give the custard a smooth, creamy body.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornflour into the hot milk. Cornflour clumps if added dry or left unstirred. Mixing it first with cold milk and stirring while it heats lets the starch disperse and thicken evenly.

“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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