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Dessert

Cheese Custard

A baked custard made with milk, eggs, cheese, bread crumbs, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Custard

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Boil 2 cups of milk and pour it over the bread crumbs.

  2. Add grated cheese, pepper, mustard, and salt to taste; stir well.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs and add them last.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a buttered pie dish at 350°F (175°C) for about 20 minutes.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs set when heated, giving the custard its firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the crumbs and gives the custard its creamy body.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the hot milk and thicken the mixture, adding body to the custard.
Grated cheese
Adds fat and savoury flavour, and helps enrich the custard's texture.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs last. Eggs are the main setting agent. Adding them after the milk, crumbs and cheese are already combined lets them blend evenly through the mixture before heat sets the proteins into a firm custard.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, cheese, butter, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, cheese, butter, pepper. 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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