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Dessert

Creams and Custards

A sweet custard made by heating milk with sugar and egg yolks, flavored with vanilla, lemon, or almond.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Creams and Custards

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Stir the sugar into the boiling milk until dissolved.

  2. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl and pour the boiling milk over them.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a stew pan and cook over low heat, stirring briskly for 20 minutes until it thickens.

Cool and flavor

  1. Remove from heat and let it sit in a cool place for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  2. Pour the custard into a basin and add your chosen flavoring.

  3. Stir until cool to prevent a skin from forming.

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. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 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 milk as they set with heat, giving the custard its body and richness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the egg yolks thicken into a custard.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the custard and dissolves fully into the hot milk.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat while stirring briskly. Egg proteins set gently at moderate temperatures; too much heat or too little stirring can scramble the yolks into lumps. Steady stirring keeps the custard smooth as it thickens.

“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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