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Dessert

Custard with Strawberries

A custard made with egg yolks, milk, flour, sugar, flavoring, and preserved strawberries, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Custard with Strawberries

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Pour the hot milk over the beaten yolks.

  3. Add the flour and sugar to taste, mixing well.

  4. Place the mixture in a double boiler and bring to a boil.

  5. Add your chosen flavoring.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer preserved strawberries in sherbet glasses.

  2. Pour the custard over the strawberries.

  3. Make a meringue with the egg whites and spread it on top.

  4. Set the glasses in the oven to brown the meringue at 350°F (175°C).

  5. To prevent cracking, place the glasses in a pan of water on a wet towel, ensuring they do not touch.

  6. Cool gradually out of drafts.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Thicken the custard as they set with heat, giving it a rich texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds creaminess.
Flour
Stabilizes the custard so it sets thicker and holds its shape.
Egg whites
Whip into a meringue that sets and browns in the oven on top.
Preserved strawberries
Provide fruit flavor and sweetness beneath the custard layer.

The step that matters

Cooling the baked custard gradually. Sudden temperature changes make egg-based custards contract quickly and crack. Setting the glasses in water on a towel and cooling them slowly out of drafts keeps the texture 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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