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Custard Sauce

A custard sauce made with milk, eggs, sugar, brandy, and optional bay leaf.

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

Why it works: Milk and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,738 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Custard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk and bay leaf.

  2. Add the sugar and cool slightly.

  3. Beat the eggs well.

  4. Pour the milk mixture onto the eggs.

  5. Strain into a jug.

  6. Place the jug in a saucepan of boiling water.

  7. Stir until the mixture thickens without boiling.

  8. Stir in the brandy.

Serve

  1. Serve.

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.

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.

  1. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  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. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 liquid base that the eggs thicken into a pourable custard.
Eggs
Their proteins set during gentle heating, thickening the sauce.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the sauce and dissolves smoothly into the warm milk.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture thickens without boiling. Egg proteins set gently between about 70 and 85 degrees Celsius. If the custard boils, the eggs scramble into lumps and it will not turn smooth again.

“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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