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Dessert

Ijoiled Custard

A thickened custard of milk, eggs, sugar and cornstarch, flavoured with lemon, stirred on the stove and poured into cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Ijoiled Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix corn starch with a small quantity of milk.

  2. Heat the quart of milk to nearly boiling point.

Make the custard

  1. Add the mixed corn starch, beaten eggs, and sugar to the hot milk.

  2. Stir until it thickens.

  3. Pour into custard cups.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Corn starch
Thickens the custard as its starch granules swell in hot liquid.
Eggs
Add richness and help set the custard as their proteins firm up with heat.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch and egg proteins thicken.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the milk and eggs.

The step that matters

Stir until it thickens. Egg proteins can curdle or scramble if the custard overheats. Keep the heat moderate and stir constantly so the starch thickens evenly while the eggs set smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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