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Dessert

Baked Custard

A custard baked in cups, made with milk, vanilla, egg yolks, egg whites, and sugar.

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 ↓

Baked Custard

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the custard

  1. Boil the milk with vanilla.

  2. Let the milk cool.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and egg whites together.

  4. Sweeten the milk and egg mixture to taste.

  5. Fill custard cups with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the cups in a Dutch oven with water reaching nearly to the tops of the cups.

  2. Bring the water to a boil until a scum forms on top of the custards.

  3. Transfer the cups to a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) to brown quickly.

  4. Remove the cups from the water.

  5. 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 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).

Vanilla and sugar 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

Eggs
Egg yolks and whites set the custard into a tender, sliceable structure as they cook.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and body that the egg proteins set within.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the rich, eggy flavour of the custard.

The step that matters

Bringing the water to a boil around the cups. Egg proteins set gently at temperatures well below boiling. Surrounding the cups in hot water moderates the heat so the custard cooks evenly and does not curdle or turn rubbery at the edges.

“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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