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Dessert

Boiled Custard

A custard made by heating milk, thickening with corn starch, and folding in beaten eggs and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Boiled Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the milk nearly to boiling in a double boiler or a pot of boiling water.

  2. Wet the corn-starch with a little cold milk and stir it into the hot milk, stirring constantly until it foams.

Make the custard

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the yolks with half the sugar.

  2. Stir in a few spoonfuls of the hot milk, then gradually add the rest of the milk mixture.

  3. Return to the kettle and cook until the custard begins to thicken.

  4. Remove from heat, whip the egg whites with the lemon juice and the remaining sugar, then stir them into the custard.

  5. Beat until the custard is nearly cold, then pour into a glass dish or cups and serve 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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Milk
Forms the custard base and, thickened, gives it its body.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard as they heat; whites are whipped in for lightness.
Corn-starch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the custard body.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the whipped whites hold their shape.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps stabilise the whipped whites.

The step that matters

Cook until the custard begins to thicken, without overheating. Egg yolks set at higher temperatures and can scramble if the custard gets too hot or boils hard. Cooking gently and stirring keeps it smooth, while the cornstarch does most of the thickening as it heats.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, corn, 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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