Why it works: Egg and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,347 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓
Custard
Ingredients
Directions
Beat the eggs well.
Pour the beaten eggs into the boiling liquid.
Return to the saucepan and stir carefully until the custard thickens, ensuring it does not boil.
Strain the mixture and flavor with vanilla.
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.
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Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together27,347 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Egg and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 27,347 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
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