Skip to main content
Dessert

With Strawberry Sauce

A custard made with eggs, flour, milk, sugar, butter, and strawberries, baked until risen and served with a strawberry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

With Strawberry Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the custard

  1. Beat the eggs with the flour until smooth.

  2. Stir this mixture into the fresh milk and add salt to taste.

  3. Strain into a buttered dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes or until it rises and breaks open on top.

  2. Serve immediately with the sauce made by creaming the sugar and butter, then stirring in the strawberries.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provide structure as they set, giving the custard its body.
Flour
Thickens the egg and milk mixture so it holds together rather than running thin.
Fresh milk
Forms the liquid base that sets into a soft, custardy texture when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it cream smoothly with the butter.

The step that matters

Bake until the custard rises and breaks open on top. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Baking until the top rises and cracks signals that the custard has set. Pulling it out too early leaves it runny, while overbaking can make it dry and rubbery.

“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.

More strawberry custard recipes

Cake 3 See all 12 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes