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Sauce

Custard Sauce

A thickened sauce made by whisking egg yolks and white with hot milk, flavored with lemon or almond extract, optionally finished with white wine.

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

Why it works: Lemon and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,832 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Custard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pour hot milk over the beaten yolks and egg white.

  2. Flavor with lemon or almond extract.

  3. Place the dish in a pan of boiling water for a few minutes.

  4. Stir continuously until the mixture thickens.

  5. If desired, stir in a little white wine.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

  3. Milk + white winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together929 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set gently with heat, giving richness.
Egg white
Adds protein that helps the custard set and gives a lighter body.
Hot milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Stir continuously until the mixture thickens. Egg proteins set at gentle heat but can curdle or scramble if they get too hot or sit unstirred. Constant stirring keeps heat even so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, white wine):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Strawberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, white wine. 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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