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Dessert

Soft Caramel Custard

A custard made with milk, eggs, sugar, and salt, finished with caramelized sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Soft Caramel Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan, reserving 1 cup.

  2. Beat the eggs in a bowl and add the reserved cold milk.

  3. In a small frying pan, stir the sugar until it melts and just begins to smoke.

  4. Pour the melted sugar into the boiling milk.

  5. Add the eggs and cold milk mixture to the boiling milk, stirring constantly until it thickens.

  6. Remove from heat and let cool.

Serve

  1. Serve in glasses.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

Eggs
Set and thicken the custard as they cook in the hot milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a smooth custard.
Sugar
Melts into caramel for flavor and color, and sweetens the custard.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the boiling milk. If the egg mixture is added too quickly or stirred too little, the eggs can scramble. Stirring constantly and adding the cold egg mixture gradually helps it thicken smoothly.

“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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