Skip to main content
Dessert

Boiled Custards

A custard made by boiling milk with spices, then adding eggs and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Boiled Custards

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Boiled Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infused milk

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the milk, lemon peel, nutmeg, bay leaf, and cinnamon. Heat over medium-high until it boils, then reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and whites together.

  2. Gradually pour in the warm milk mixture while stirring quickly to prevent curdling.

  3. Return the mixture to the heat and stir with a wooden spoon until it just boils.

  4. Strain the custard through a fine sieve into a bowl.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooled, stir in brandy or white wine to taste.

  2. Serve in glasses or cups, and optionally grate a little nutmeg on top.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cinnamon + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard as they set with gentle heat.
Egg whites
Add protein that helps the custard set and gives a lighter texture.
New milk
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the infused spices and peel.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic citrus oils that flavour the milk as it simmers.

The step that matters

Adding the warm milk to the eggs. Pouring hot milk too fast into the eggs can scramble them. Adding it gradually while stirring warms the yolks gently so the custard thickens smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, nutmeg, cinnamon, egg, brandy. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes