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Dessert

Boiled Custard

A custard made by boiling milk, thickening with corn starch, and folding in beaten eggs, finished with whipped egg whites on top.

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 ↓

Boiled Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pour 1 pint of milk into a tin pail and place the tin pail in a kettle of boiling water.

  2. In a cup, mix 1 tablespoon of corn-starch with a little cold milk.

  3. Separate the eggs and beat the yolks with ½ cup of sugar.

  4. Add the milk and corn-starch mixture to the yolks.

Make the custard

  1. When the milk is boiling, stir in the egg mixture.

  2. Stir continuously until the mixture thickens.

  3. Let it cool in a cool place.

  4. Add flavoring to the custard.

  5. Pour the custard into a serving dish.

Make the egg white topping

  1. In a separate pan, bring water to a boil.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Drop the stiff egg whites in heaps onto the boiling water.

  4. Use a skimmer to remove the egg whites.

  5. Place the egg whites carefully on top of the 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. 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. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and sets into a smooth, creamy texture when heated.
Corn-starch
Thickens the custard as its starch granules swell when heated with liquid.
Eggs
Yolks thicken and enrich the custard; whites whip into a light foam for the topping.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the savory-tasting egg and milk base.

The step that matters

Stir constantly once the egg mixture goes in. Egg yolks set when heated and can curdle or turn lumpy if heated unevenly. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly while the cornstarch thickens the custard.

“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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