Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
French Custard
Ingredients
Directions
Make the custard
Sweeten the milk with sugar and flavor with peach.
Pour the milk into a flat pan and bring it to a boil.
Beat the egg whites until frothy.
Once the milk boils, drop spoonfuls of egg whites into the milk and skim them off onto a dish.
Beat the yolks and stir them into the boiling milk until it thickens.
Serve
Pour the thickened milk over the egg whites and decorate with jelly.
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.
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 base of the custard, which thickens as the yolks set in the hot liquid.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the boiling milk into a smooth custard as they set from the heat.
- Egg whites
- Whipped to a froth, they form light, airy floating islands in the custard.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the milk for a mildly sweet custard.
The step that matters
Stirring the yolks into the boiling milk. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they are added to very hot liquid too quickly. Stirring steadily while the milk is boiling lets the yolks thicken it smoothly and 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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