Skip to main content
Dessert

Boiled Custard

A custard made by boiling milk with egg yolks and sugar, folded with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Boiled Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it steams.

  2. Beat together the egg yolks and sugar in a bowl.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the steaming milk until it thickens.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool.

  5. Add salt and flavor to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites with lemon extract and enough powdered sugar to stiffen in a separate bowl.

  2. Spoon the beaten egg whites over the cooled custard in 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the egg yolks thicken into a custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as their proteins set with gentle heat.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilize the beaten egg whites.
Egg whites
Whip into a light foam that sits on top of the custard.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the steaming milk. Egg proteins set gently with heat. If the hot milk is added too quickly or the mixture gets too hot, the yolks can scramble into lumps instead of thickening smoothly. Stir steadily while adding.

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.

More boiled custard recipes

Pudding 12Rich 6 See all 257 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes