Name: A Simple Custard
Ingredients: 1 quart milk; 6 eggs, separated; 1 tablespoon corn starch; ½ cup sugar; Flavoring to taste

Why it works: Milk and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,953 recipes mention both. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the custard

In a saucepan, heat the milk.
In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and mix in the corn starch and sugar.
Gradually add the hot milk to the egg mixture, stirring constantly.
Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook over low heat until thickened.

Make the meringue and serve

Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and drop them into boiling water for a few minutes.
Serve the custard topped with the cooked egg whites.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Milk + corntop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together6,953 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Milk + eggtop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together88,465 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together77,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + sugartop 10% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together122,252 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Corn + sugartop 11% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together7,166 recipes

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

Milk and sugar share little aroma chemistry, yet 77,855 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Milk: Forms the liquid base that the custard thickens into a smooth, creamy texture.
Egg yolks: Coagulate on gentle heating to set and thicken the custard.
Corn starch: Thickens the custard by swelling in the hot liquid to create body.
Sugar: Sweetens the custard and helps stabilize the egg yolk mixture.
Egg whites: Whip into a stiff foam that is poached to form light, airy topping.

The step that matters

Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook over low heat until thickened. Egg yolks set at around 70°C, and the proteins can curdle if the heat is too high or the custard is left unstirred. Gentle, constant heat with stirring thickens it smoothly without scrambling the eggs.

“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.