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For Savory Custard

A custard made with egg yolks, egg white, clear soup, and salt, steamed in a buttered dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

For Savory Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Whisk egg yolks, egg white, clear soup, and salt until well combined.

  2. Grease a small heatproof dish with butter.

  3. Pour the egg mixture into the greased dish.

  4. Cover the dish with buttered parchment paper and secure it with string.

Steam and serve

  1. Place the dish in a saucepan of boiling water, ensuring the water does not touch the paper.

  2. Reduce heat and let it simmer for 15 minutes without boiling.

  3. Remove the dish from the water, take off the parchment paper, and let the custard cool.

  4. Cut the custard into diamond-shaped pieces.

  5. Just before serving, pour the soup into a hot tureen and add the savory custard.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Provide richness and set the custard into a tender, sliceable texture when gently heated.
Egg white
Adds protein that helps the custard set firmly and hold its shape when cut.
Clear soup
Supplies the liquid base and savory flavour, keeping the custard moist as it sets.

The step that matters

Simmering without boiling. Egg custards set through gentle heat. Boiling water or high heat can make the custard porous, curdled, or rubbery, so the water should only simmer.

“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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