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Savory Custard

A custard made with eggs, beef tea, and salt, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and tea work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 417 recipes. Both carry 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan, which smells thiamin, meat. The science ↓

Savory Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Separate the yolks of 2 eggs.

  2. Add the white of 1 egg to a small bowl.

  3. Mix in ½ cup of beef tea and ¼ teaspoon of salt.

  4. Whisk the eggs and beef tea together until well combined.

Cook

  1. Butter the inside of a small heatproof dish.

  2. Pour the mixture into the dish.

  3. Butter a piece of parchment paper.

  4. Cover the dish with the parchment paper, securing it with string.

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

  6. Reduce heat.

  7. Let it simmer for 15 minutes without boiling.

  8. Remove the dish from the water.

  9. Take off the parchment paper.

  10. Serve.

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. Beef + teatop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan (thiamin, meat).

  2. Egg + beeftop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Egg + teatop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together821 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard into a firm, sliceable texture as they cook.
Beef tea
Provides the liquid base and savory flavor of the custard.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. Egg custards turn grainy, spongy, or full of holes if cooked too hard. Keeping the water below a boil lets the egg proteins set gently 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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