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Dessert

Boiled Custard

A simple custard made by boiling milk with corn starch, eggs, sugar, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Boiled Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix corn starch with a small quantity of milk and flavor it.

  2. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  3. Heat the remaining milk to near boiling.

Cook the custard

  1. Add the mixed corn starch, eggs, sugar, butter, and salt to the hot milk.

  2. Boil for 2 minutes, stirring briskly.

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

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

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Swells when heated with the milk, thickening the custard.
Eggs
Their proteins set on heating, adding body and richness to the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the milk and eggs.
Butter
Adds fat, giving the custard a smoother, richer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boil for 2 minutes, stirring briskly. Corn starch only thickens fully once the mixture reaches a boil, and it can scorch or form lumps on the bottom of the pan. Constant, brisk stirring keeps the heat even and the starch dispersed while the custard thickens.

“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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