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Dessert

Custard Toast

Custard toast is toast topped with a thickened custard made from eggs, milk, sugar, and salt.

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

Custard Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make the toast.

  2. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  3. Add the sugar and salt to the eggs.

Make the custard

  1. Pour the hot milk onto the egg mixture, stirring well.

  2. Return the mixture to the heat and cook until thick as cream, stirring constantly.

  3. Strain the custard, add flavoring if desired, and pour over the toast.

Serve

  1. Serve warm or cold.

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

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

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and milk 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 custard as they set when heated, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Hot milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and carries the egg proteins that set it.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the savory-leaning richness of the eggs and milk.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard. Egg proteins set as the mixture heats, so it must be stirred constantly over gentle heat. Too much heat or too little stirring can scramble the eggs into lumps, while stopping too early leaves it thin.

“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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