Name: Farola Custard
Ingredients: 6 patty pans, buttered and lined with pie crust; 2 tablespoons corn flour; 1 cup cold milk, divided; 1 teaspoon white sugar; 2 small eggs or 1 large egg; ½ cup milk; Nutmeg, for grating

Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Farola Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Butter the patty pans and line them with pie crust.
In a bowl, mix corn flour with 4 tablespoons of cold milk.

Make the custard

In a pan, heat the remaining milk until boiling, then add sugar.
Stir until the milk rises, then pour in the corn flour mixture.
Stir until thickened and boiling, then remove from heat and cool to blood temperature.
Beat the eggs and mix with ½ cup of milk, then combine with the cooled mixture.

Bake and serve

Divide the mixture among the patty pans and grate nutmeg on top.
Bake until set, then cool before serving.

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.

Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Corn + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together563 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,165 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Corn flour: Thickens the milk into a smooth, set custard as it cooks and boils.
Eggs: Set during baking to give the custard its firm, sliceable structure.
Milk: Forms the liquid base that the starch and eggs thicken and set.
White sugar: Adds sweetness to the custard base.

The step that matters

Cool the thickened mixture before adding the eggs. Egg proteins begin to set around 70 to 80°C, so pouring beaten eggs into a very hot starch mixture can scramble them. Cooling it to blood temperature first lets the eggs blend smoothly and set evenly when baked.