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Dessert

Custard Filling

A custard filling made with cornstarch, milk, butter, egg yolks, sugar, flavoring, topped with coconut or nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Custard Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Dissolve cornstarch in a little milk.

  2. Combine the dissolved cornstarch with the scant cup of milk and butter in a double boiler, and stir until the mixture begins to thicken.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and sugar until very light.

  4. Pour some boiling custard onto the egg mixture, then return the mixture to the double boiler.

  5. Stir for a few minutes, adding flavoring.

Assemble and finish

  1. When cool, spread the custard between layers of cake.

  2. Sprinkle the spread custard with coconut or ground nuts.

  3. Cover the top of the cake with a thin layer of custard.

  4. Sprinkle the top custard with nuts.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, spreadable custard as it heats.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the custard as they are heated.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornstarch thickens.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and softens its flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the custard as it thickens. Cornstarch thickens when heated but can form lumps or scorch if left unstirred. Constant stirring in the double boiler keeps the custard smooth, and heating the egg yolks gently keeps them from curdling.

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutthe original
  4. Peachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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