Skip to main content
Sauce

Custard Sauce

A sweet sauce made with eggs, sugar, milk, arrowroot, butter, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Custard Sauce

Why it works: Arrowroot and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 159 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Custard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the butter into the sugar.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and beat until light.

  3. Stir in the arrowroot and nutmeg.

  4. Gradually pour in the scalding milk while stirring.

  5. Place the mixture in a saucepan over boiling water for 5 minutes, stirring continuously without letting it boil.

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. Arrowroot + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the custard as they set with gentle heat, giving body and richness to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps soften the eggs, giving a smooth texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, and its heat helps the eggs thicken.
Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce by swelling in liquid, giving a smooth, glossy body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel in the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard over water without boiling. Egg proteins set gently as the sauce warms. If it boils, the eggs can scramble and the sauce turns grainy and thin. Keep the heat moderate and stir constantly.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk, butter, 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.

More custard sauce recipes

German 16Vanilla 3 See all 94 →

You might also like

Arrowroot SauceArrowroot Sauce18 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes