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Dessert

Boiled Custard

A custard made by heating milk, mixing eggs and sugar, thickening, and topping with meringue and fruit.

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 ↓

Boiled Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk almost to boiling.

  2. Beat the yolks well, then stir in the sugar.

  3. Carefully stir the yolk mixture into the hot milk, removing it from the heat to do so.

  4. Beat the 5 egg whites to a froth and stir them into the mixture.

  5. Return the mixture to the heat and stir carefully until thickened, but do not let it boil.

  6. Add the vanilla and pour into glass cups.

Top and serve

  1. Whip the remaining 2 egg whites to a meringue with a heaping tablespoon of powdered sugar.

  2. Once the custard is cold, top each cup with a little meringue.

  3. Garnish with a preserved strawberry, cherry, or a little bright colored jelly.

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set during gentle heating, giving it body and a rich texture.
Egg whites
Whipped to a froth and to a meringue, they add airy lightness to the custard and its topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the yolks thicken into a smooth, pourable custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and also helps stabilize the whipped egg whites in the meringue.

The step that matters

Return the mixture to the heat and stir carefully until thickened, but do not let it boil.. Egg yolk proteins thicken the custard as they warm, but past about 180°F they curdle and scramble, leaving a grainy texture. Constant gentle stirring and stopping at thickening prevents this.

“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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