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Dessert

Cream Custard

A sweet custard made with butter, flour, egg yolks, sugar, milk, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cream Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Whisk together the flour and melted butter until smooth.

  3. Beat the egg yolks.

  4. Add the sugar to the beaten yolks.

  5. Scald the milk in a pot.

  6. Gradually add the flour and butter mixture to the milk.

  7. Stir in the sugar and beaten egg yolks.

Cook and flavor

  1. Cook in a double boiler until thick, stirring frequently.

  2. Add your choice of flavoring before serving.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Enriches the custard and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the mixture as it cooks, giving the custard its body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they cook and add richness and a smooth set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the yolks and butter.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the thickening starches and yolks set into custard.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until thick. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle or scramble if the heat is too high. A double boiler supplies gentle, even heat, and constant stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the bottom of the pan.

“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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