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Dessert

Nourishing Custard

A custard made with egg yolks, milk, water, Bovril, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Nourishing Custard

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Mix the Bovril with the heated water and stir into the beaten eggs.

  3. Boil the milk and add it to the mixture, seasoning to taste.

  4. Strain the mixture into a well-buttered mold or basin.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the mold in a stew-pan with hot water.

  2. Cover the stew-pan with buttered paper.

  3. Cook in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 20 minutes.

  4. Turn out the custard and serve hot or cold.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Set the custard into a tender, sliceable structure as they cook.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, diluting the eggs for a smoother set.
Bovril
Provides savoury, salty flavour and depth to the custard.

The step that matters

Cook in the water bath. Baking the mold in hot water surrounds the custard with gentle, even heat. Egg proteins set smoothly at moderate temperatures, so excessive heat can curdle or overcook the custard, leaving it grainy or 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.

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