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Dessert

Custard a LA Royale

A custard made with egg yolks, cold broth, and salt, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 118,511 recipes mention both. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Break the egg yolks into a bowl and remove the germs.

  2. Mix in the clear cold broth and season with salt.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Butter a half‑pint charlotte mold and pour in the mixture.

Poach and unmold

  1. Fold a sheet of kitchen paper and place it at the bottom of a shallow stew‑pan.

  2. Add enough water to reach halfway up the outside of the mold and bring to a boil.

  3. Cool for a minute, then place the mold in the water and return to heat.

  4. Once boiling, reduce heat to a gentle simmer, cover, and cook for 25‑30 minutes until stiff.

  5. Let it cool in the mold, then turn it out to use.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Egg + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together118,511 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Coagulate when heated, setting the custard into a firm, sliceable body.
Clear cold broth
Thins the yolks and adds savoury flavour while keeping the custard smooth.

The step that matters

Gentle simmer after boiling. Egg proteins set best at low, steady heat. A hard boil makes the custard curdle, turn grainy and porous, and weep liquid, so keep the water at a gentle simmer once the mold is in.

“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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