Skip to main content
Dessert

Boiled Custards for Tarts

A boiled custard made with milk, spices, sugar, and eggs, used as a filling for tarts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Boiled Custards for Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Flavour the milk

  1. Boil the milk with the laurel leaf, mace, and lemon or orange peel.

  2. Remove the flavoring.

  3. Dissolve the sugar in the milk.

Make the custard

  1. Mix the egg whites and yolks with the cold milk to prevent curdling.

  2. Gradually add the egg mixture to the milk, stirring continuously.

  3. Place the custard in a basin that fits on top of a saucepan half full of boiling water.

  4. Stir continuously with a wooden spoon for 20 minutes, keeping the water boiling.

Serve

  1. Pour into glasses or cups.

  2. Grate nutmeg over each.

  3. Let cool.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Laurel + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together872 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Laurel + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,239 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Laurel + macetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,164 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 that the eggs thicken and carries the flavourings.
Eggs
Thicken the custard as the proteins set with gentle heat, giving it body.
Powdered white sugar
Sweetens the custard and softens its flavour against the eggs.

The step that matters

Gentle heat while stirring the custard. Egg proteins set at higher temperatures and can curdle or scramble if heated too fast. Keeping the custard over simmering water and stirring constantly lets it thicken smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, laurel, lemon, sugar, egg, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, laurel, lemon, sugar, egg, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes