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Dessert

Egg Butter

Egg Butter is a custard made from nut milk, flour, egg yolk, and optional peanut cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and peanut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,048 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Egg Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Cook the nut milk in a double boiler for 3 hours, stirring often to prevent lumps.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix 1 cup of the cooked milk with 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 tablespoon of white flour rubbed smooth in cold water.

  3. Cook this mixture in the double boiler for 15-20 minutes until the flour is well cooked.

  4. Add the well-beaten egg yolk and optional peanut cream, stirring constantly for 1 minute to avoid curdling.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a wet mold and set it in a cool place until completely cold.

  2. Turn it out onto a butter dish when ready to use.

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 + peanuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,048 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + peanuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Raw nut milk
Forms the base of the dish, providing the liquid that is cooked down and set.
White flour
Thickens the mixture as its starch cooks, giving the set body.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps the mixture set firm when it cools.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk. Egg yolk can curdle or scramble if it meets very hot liquid too quickly. Stirring constantly while it is added keeps the proteins dispersed so the mixture stays smooth and thickens evenly.

Swap the peanut

The recipe marks peanut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, egg, cream):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, egg, cream. 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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