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Dessert

Digestive Custard

A custard made with blancmange, egg yolk, malt flour, and cream or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Digestive Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare ½ pint of blancmange using corn flour.

  2. Beat the egg yolk with malt flour and cream or milk in a bowl.

Make the custard

  1. Pour the egg mixture into the hot blancmange while stirring continuously.

  2. Flavor to taste and serve alone or with stewed or preserved fruit and puddings.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Malt + flourtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + malttop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 yolk
Thickens and enriches the custard, adding richness and a smooth set.
Malt flour
Adds a malty, aromatic flavour to the custard.
Blancmange
Forms the thickened base that the egg mixture is stirred into.

The step that matters

Pour the egg mixture into the hot blancmange while stirring continuously. Adding the egg yolk to hot liquid while stirring constantly keeps it from scrambling. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the yolk blends in smoothly and the custard stays silky.

“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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