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Dessert

Custard

A custard made with milk, lemon rind, sugar, isinglass, almonds, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Custard

Why it works: Lemon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Custard

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Simmer the milk with the lemon rind and sugar.

  2. Strain off the lemon rind.

  3. Dissolve the isinglass in water.

  4. Pour the boiling milk over the dissolved isinglass.

  5. Add the blanched and pounded almonds.

  6. Boil gently for 5 minutes.

  7. Stir in the beaten egg yolks.

  8. Boil once more.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a mold.

  2. Let it cool.

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. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Isinglass
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly custard as it cools.
Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the milk mixture and add richness to the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the other ingredients are combined into.
Sweet almonds
Add nutty flavour and body to the custard base.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the flavour.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble and turn grainy if they boil hard. Keeping the heat gentle after adding them helps the custard stay smooth.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Milletfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, sugar, egg. 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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