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Dessert

Soft Custard

A creamy custard made by heating milk, beating eggs with sugar, and cooking until thick, then flavored and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Soft Custard

Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Soft Custard

Oven, in the book's wordsA very moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Beat the eggs until creamy, then add the sugar.

Make the custard

  1. Blend in the hot milk gradually until fully combined.

  2. Return the mixture to the double boiler.

  3. Cook on low heat until thick and creamy, and do not let the custard boil.

  4. Add the flavoring and beat well.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

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

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

Eggs
Their proteins set when gently heated, thickening the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a smooth custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the custard.

The step that matters

Cook on low heat and do not let the custard boil. Egg proteins thicken gently when heated slowly. Too much heat makes them tighten and curdle, leaving the custard grainy instead of smooth.

“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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