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Soft Custard

A custard made by heating milk, whisking eggs and sugar, then combining and gently cooking until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Soft Custard

Why it works: Egg and milk 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 ↓

Soft Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a pan, heat the milk over a kettle of boiling water.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until well combined.

Make the custard

  1. Once the milk is boiling, remove it from the heat and gradually stir in the egg mixture.

  2. Return the pan to the kettle and stir constantly until it begins to thicken.

Cool

  1. Immediately remove from heat and set the pan in cold water.

  2. Add your choice of flavoring.

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. Egg + milktop 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

Eggs
Proteins set when heated, thickening the liquid into a smooth custard.
Milk
Liquid base that the egg proteins set into a creamy, tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the eggs and milk.

The step that matters

Gradually stir the egg mixture into the hot milk, then stir constantly over the water. Adding the eggs gradually, with steady stirring, keeps them from curdling. Egg proteins set at gentle heat, so overheating or leaving the custard unstirred can scramble it. Removing it as soon as it begins to thicken prevents this.

“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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