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Custard

A sweet, thickened dish made from egg yolks, milk, sugar and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Custard

Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Place the milk and thinly pared lemon rind in a pan with the sugar.

  2. Heat until warm, then pour onto the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Stir well and return to the pan.

  4. Stir until it thickens, but do not allow to boil.

Serve

  1. Strain and 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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 yolks
Thicken the custard as they set gently with heat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, carrying the lemon flavour and setting with the yolks.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps balance the tartness of the lemon.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic lemon oils that flavour the warm milk as it steeps.

The step that matters

Stir until it thickens, but do not allow to boil.. Egg yolks set at low heat, around 70 to 80 degrees C. Boiling can scramble them into grainy curds, so the custard must be stirred gently and removed from heat once it coats the spoon.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk. 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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