Skip to main content
Dessert

Boiled Custard

A custard made by boiling milk with lemon peel, coriander, cinnamon, and almonds, then mixing with cream, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and coriander match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,498 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk with lemon peel, coriander, cinnamon, and pounded almonds for 5 minutes.

  2. Mix the boiled milk with cream, egg yolks, and beaten egg whites.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Stir over low heat until it begins to thicken.

  5. Remove from heat and stir until nearly cold.

  6. Add brandy.

Serve

  1. Fill cups or glasses.

  2. Grate 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.

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 + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,498 recipes

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

  2. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Coriander + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,635 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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 over low heat, and add richness.
Egg whites
Add lightness and body to the mixture before it is gently thickened.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the custard a smooth, velvety texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that is infused with flavour and thickened by the eggs.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the richness of the cream and yolks.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat until it begins to thicken. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures, so heating gently and stirring keeps the custard smooth. High heat can curdle the eggs into lumps.

Swap the coriander

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, cinnamon, almond, sugar, cream, 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 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes