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Dessert

French Custard

A custard made with eggs, flour, milk, sugar, and optional flavoring, topped with beaten egg whites and browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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French Custard

Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓

French Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Separate the eggs and beat the whites until stiff.

  2. In a bowl, mix the yolks with flour and milk.

Make the custard

  1. Heat the mixture until it comes to a boil, then sweeten and flavor to taste.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the custard into a dish, drop the beaten egg whites on top, and brown in the oven.

  2. Serve without sauce.

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. Flour + milktop 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).

Flour and milk 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard while whites form a light, airy topping that browns.
Flour
Starch thickens the milk mixture so the custard holds its body when heated.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, providing moisture and creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the topping brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Heating the mixture to a boil. Starch in the flour needs to reach a boil to fully thicken the milk and yolks. Heating too gently leaves the custard thin, while overheating can scramble the egg yolks into lumps.

“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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