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Dessert

Cold Custard

A chilled milk custard sweetened with sugar and flavored with wine.

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

Why it works: Milk and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cold Custard

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sweeten the milk with white sugar to your taste.

  2. Stir in 1 tablespoon of wine that has had rennet soaked in it.

  3. If the flavor is not strong enough, add more wine without rennet.

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

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

  2. Milk + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (fenugreek, curry).

  3. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 that rennet coagulates into a soft, set custard.
Rennet
Enzyme that causes milk proteins to coagulate and set into a curd.
White sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the milk.
Wine
Carries the soaked rennet and adds flavor to the custard.

The step that matters

Stir in the rennet wine evenly. Rennet is an enzyme that causes milk proteins to coagulate into a set curd. Mixing it thoroughly distributes it so the whole custard sets evenly rather than in patches.

“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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