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 ↓
Boiled Custard
Ingredients
Directions
Make the custard
In a large pot, heat the milk over boiling water.
Stir the sugar into the milk until dissolved.
Once the milk is boiling, slowly add the well-beaten eggs while stirring.
Add flavoring to taste.
Continue cooking until the mixture is well set.
Cool and serve
Pour into a dish to cool before serving.
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.
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Eggs
- Thicken the milk as they cook, setting it into a smooth custard.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into custard.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the custard and dissolves into the warm milk.
The step that matters
Adding the eggs to the hot milk. Eggs scrambled by sudden high heat turn lumpy. Adding the beaten eggs slowly while stirring, and keeping the heat gentle, lets the proteins set evenly into a smooth custard.
“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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