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Dessert

Made of Milk

A custard made by boiling milk, whisking eggs, and combining with cold milk, sugar, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Made of Milk

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil half of the milk.

  2. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  3. Slowly pour the boiling milk into the eggs while stirring continuously.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Add the cold milk, sugar, and flavoring to the strained mixture.

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

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

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

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Provides the liquid base and moisture that the egg proteins set into a custard.
Eggs
Set when gently heated, giving the custard its structure and body.

The step that matters

Slowly pour the boiling milk into the eggs while stirring continuously. Adding hot milk to eggs too quickly can scramble them, because the egg proteins coagulate before they are evenly diluted. Pouring slowly while stirring warms the eggs gradually so the mixture stays smooth.

“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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