Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Baked Custards
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Butter custard cups.
Make the custard
Pour hot milk over beaten eggs and mix well.
Fill the buttered custard cups with the mixture.
Place the cups in a pan of hot water.
Bake until set.
Top and finish
Remove from the oven.
Heap meringue on top of the custards.
Return to the oven briefly to color the meringue.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Egg + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Set and thicken the custard as they cook, giving it structure.
- Hot milk
- Provides the liquid base and moisture that the egg proteins set within.
- Butter
- Greases the custard cups so the baked custard releases cleanly and adds richness.
- Meringue
- Forms a sweet topping that browns lightly when returned to the oven.
The step that matters
Bake until set. Egg proteins coagulate at moderate heat and firm the custard. Overbaking forces out liquid and makes the texture grainy or watery, so bake gently in the water bath until just set.
“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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