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Dessert

Pastry Custard

A custard made with milk, egg yolks, cornflour, sugar, and vanilla, thickened by boiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Pastry Custard

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan and add the sugar.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks.

  3. Mix the cornflour with a little cold milk, then add it to the egg yolks.

  4. Pour the hot milk mixture onto the egg yolks and cornflour, stirring constantly.

  5. Return the mixture to the pan and boil for a few minutes until thickened.

  6. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla once slightly cooled.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set and add richness.
Cornflour
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable custard when boiled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.

The step that matters

Stirring while pouring the hot milk onto the egg yolks. Pouring hot milk onto yolks too quickly, or without constant stirring, can scramble the eggs into lumps. Stirring keeps the yolks evenly dispersed as they warm gently.

“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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