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Dessert

Made of Milk

A frozen custard made by boiling milk, mixing with eggs and sugar, then cooling and freezing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg 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 ↓

Made of Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil half of the milk in a pot.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar.

  3. Pour the hot milk into the egg mixture and stir well.

  4. Return the mixture to the pot and bring it to a boil once more.

Cool and freeze

  1. Add the remaining cold milk and let it cool.

  2. Once cooled, add your desired flavoring and freeze the mixture.

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 + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar 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

Milk
Forms the base of the pudding and provides its creamy liquid body.
Eggs
Thicken the custard as they cook and add richness and structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and softens its texture once frozen.

The step that matters

Returning the mixture to the boil. Egg-thickened custards can curdle or turn grainy if overheated, so bring it back to a boil only until it thickens and stir constantly.

“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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