Why it works: Egg and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Custard Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the custard
Mix the Liebig Company's Extract with ½ quart of water.
Beat the eggs well and combine with the mixture.
Steam the custard in a greased mold for 20 minutes.
Cut and shape
Once cooled, turn it out and cut into thin slices.
Use a fancy cutter to stamp out shapes like squares or rounds.
For a decorative touch, color the custard red with carmine and stamp out hearts and diamonds.
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.
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Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together50,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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 when heated, giving the custard its firm structure so it can be sliced and stamped.
- Liebig company's extract
- Adds a concentrated savory, meaty flavor to the custard.
The step that matters
Steam the custard gently. Egg custard sets through gentle heat. If it boils or cooks too hard, the proteins tighten quickly, causing bubbles, weeping and a spongy texture that will not slice cleanly.
“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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