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Dessert

Baked Custard

A custard made by boiling milk with spices, adding cold milk and eggs, then baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Coriander and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,498 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Custard

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard base

  1. Boil 1 pint of milk with coriander seeds, cinnamon, and lemon peel.

  2. Sweeten with 4 ounces of loaf sugar.

  3. Mix in 1 pint of cold milk.

  4. Beat 8 eggs for 10 minutes. Add the beaten eggs to the mixture.

  5. Pour the mixture from one pan to another 6 to 8 times.

  6. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  7. Let the mixture stand. Skim off the froth from the top.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill earthen cups with the mixture.

  2. Bake in a hot oven (400°F) for about 10 minutes.

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. Coriander + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,498 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Coriander + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Set the custard as they cook, giving it structure and a tender, creamy body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken, providing moisture and creaminess.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds a little browning at the surface during baking.

The step that matters

Bake in a hot oven. Egg proteins set with heat, so the custard can curdle or turn rubbery if overbaked. Baking only until just set keeps it smooth.

Swap the coriander

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, 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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