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Baked Cup Custards

A custard baked in cups with a meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Baked Cup 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.

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, beat the yolks of all the eggs and the whites of 2 eggs.

  3. Add all but 2 tablespoons of sugar to the egg mixture and mix well.

  4. Pour the hot milk into the egg mixture, stirring continuously.

  5. Fill buttered cups with the custard mixture.

  6. Place the cups in a baking dish filled with hot water.

  7. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Top and serve

  1. For the meringue, whip the reserved egg whites with the remaining sugar and lemon juice until stiff.

  2. Spread the meringue over the custards and return to the oven until lightly browned.

  3. Serve cold from the cups.

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 + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Yolks thicken the custard and whites build the structure of the meringue.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that sets into a soft, creamy custard when heated with eggs.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and meringue and helps the whites hold their stiff foam.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that stabilizes the meringue foam and brightens the flavor.

The step that matters

Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set. Egg proteins set at moderate heat, so the custard can curdle or turn grainy if overbaked or heated too hard. The hot water bath moderates the heat and keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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