Skip to main content
Dessert

Rich Boiled Custard

A custard made by boiling cream, sugar, lemon rind, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Rich Boiled Custard

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Rich Boiled Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cream

  1. Take ½ cup of cream from the quart and set aside.

  2. Simmer the remaining cream with ½ cup sugar and the lemon rind for a few minutes.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the 8 egg yolks.

  2. Strain the beaten yolks.

  3. Mix the strained yolks with the reserved cream.

  4. Stir the simmering cream into the egg mixture to thicken the custard.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and lemon 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 their proteins set with gentle heat, giving it body.
Fresh cream
Adds richness and a smooth, full mouthfeel to the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the richness of the yolks and cream.
Lemon rind
Infuses the simmering cream with bright citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Stirring the simmering cream into the egg mixture. Adding hot cream to the yolks too quickly can scramble them into lumps. Adding it slowly while stirring warms the yolks gradually so they thicken smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More boiled custard recipes

Pudding 12Rich 6 See all 257 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes