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Dessert

Boiled Custard

A custard made by heating milk, thickening with corn starch, adding beaten eggs and sugar, and topping with cooked egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Boiled Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Dissolve the corn-starch in a little cold milk.

  3. Add the dissolved corn-starch to the heated milk.

  4. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together.

  5. Stir the beaten yolks and sugar into the mixture.

  6. Cook until the custard thickens, stirring constantly.

Make the egg whites and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  2. Cook the frothy egg whites floating on boiling water for a few minutes.

  3. Remove the cooked egg whites with a skimmer.

  4. Place the cooked egg whites on an inverted sieve.

  5. Once the custard is cool, place the cooked egg whites on top.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 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 liquid base of the custard, giving it its body and creamy texture.
Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the custard as they heat, and whipped whites give the topping its light, airy structure.
Corn-starch
Swells when heated in the milk, thickening the custard so it sets smooth rather than runny.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps soften the set of the egg yolks.

The step that matters

Cook until the custard thickens, stirring constantly.. Egg yolks and starch can scorch or curdle if heated unevenly. Constant stirring spreads the heat so the custard thickens smoothly without lumps or overcooked egg.

“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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