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Dessert

Soft Custard

A custard made with milk, egg yolks, sugar, corn starch, vanilla, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Soft Custard

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Soft Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the egg and starch

  1. Beat the egg yolks until light.

  2. Mix the egg yolks with 2 tablespoons of cold milk.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of milk with the corn starch.

  4. Add the corn starch mixture to the egg mixture.

Make the custard

  1. Heat the remaining milk in a double boiler until hot.

  2. Stir the egg and corn starch mixture into the hot milk.

  3. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring well.

Finish

  1. Remove from heat and add salt.

  2. Let cool, then add vanilla.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the custard as their proteins set with gentle heat.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard as its granules swell and gelatinize when heated in liquid.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs and starch thicken into a custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the egg yolks.
Vanilla
Adds aroma to the finished custard.

The step that matters

Stir the egg and starch mixture into the hot milk. Keep stirring while the mixture cooks. Egg proteins can scramble and starch can clump if one part overheats or sits unstirred. Stirring spreads the heat evenly so the custard thickens smoothly.

“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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