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Savoury Custard

Savory custard made with egg, beef tea, and salt, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Savoury Custard

Why it works: Beef and tea work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 417 recipes. Both carry 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan, which smells thiamin, meat. The science ↓

Savoury Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the egg into a small bowl.

  2. Add the beef tea and salt, then whisk together until well combined.

  3. Butter the inside of a small heatproof dish.

  4. Pour the mixture into the prepared dish.

  5. Butter a piece of parchment paper and place it over the top of the dish, securing it with string.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the dish in a saucepan of boiling water, ensuring the water does not touch the paper.

  2. Reduce the heat and let it simmer for 15 minutes without boiling.

  3. Remove the dish from the saucepan, take off the paper, and turn the custard out onto a hot serving plate.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Beef + teatop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan (thiamin, meat).

  2. Egg + beeftop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Egg + teatop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together821 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg
Sets when heated, giving the custard its firm, sliceable structure.
Beef tea
Supplies the liquid and savory flavor that the egg sets within.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. Egg proteins set gently at temperatures just below boiling. Boiling water or high heat can make the custard rise, bubble and turn rubbery or pitted, so the heat must stay low.

“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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