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Custards

A custard made with rizine crystals, eggs, condensed milk, flavoring, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Custards

Why it works: Condensed milk and sugar work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 804 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Make the milk from condensed milk and let it cool.

  2. Beat the eggs with some flavoring and sugar, if desired.

  3. Add the beaten eggs to the cooled milk.

  4. Stir in the rizine crystals and heat the mixture until nearly boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve the custard when it is cold.

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. Condensed milk + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + condensed milktop 38% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together591 recipes

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Rizine crystals
Thicken the milk mixture as it heats, giving the custard its set body.
Eggs
Add richness and help the custard set and thicken as it cools.
Condensed milk
Provides sweetness and a creamy, rich body to the milk base.

The step that matters

Heating until nearly boiling. Once the eggs are in, the mixture must be heated carefully. Egg proteins can curdle or turn grainy if it overheats, while the thickener needs enough heat to activate and set the custard.

“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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