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Dessert

Boiled Custard

A custard made by heating milk and sugar, then adding beaten eggs, and cooking until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard base

  1. Combine milk and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Heat until warm.

  3. Beat eggs in a bowl.

  4. Gradually add eggs to the warm milk mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the custard thickens.

  2. Remove from heat.

  3. Let cool slightly.

  4. Add flour to thicken further (if desired).

  5. Serve hot.

  6. Spoon custard into bowls.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

Milk and flour 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
Set and thicken the custard as they cook gently with the milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a smooth custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the eggs and milk.
Flour
Adds extra thickness to the custard as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat, stirring constantly. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures, so heat that is too high or stirring that stops can scramble the eggs and leave lumps. Gentle, constant stirring lets the custard thicken evenly and smoothly.

“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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