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Dessert

French Custards

A custard made with milk, egg yolks, sugar, and optional cream, baked in a water bath and served cold with macaroons or ratafias.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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French Custards

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

French Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Gently boil the milk with sugar and a pinch of salt for a few minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and briskly stir in the egg yolks.

  3. Butter a round deep dish and pour in the custard mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the dish in a pan of boiling water, ensuring the water does not touch the custard.

  2. Let it simmer gently for 1 to 1.5 hours until firm in the middle.

  3. Keep a few live embers on the lid to prevent steam from falling into the custard.

  4. Serve the custard cold, garnished with chopped macaroons or ratafias around the edge.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Set the custard into a firm, sliceable texture as they cook gently.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that carries the custard's body and creaminess.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the set custard's flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Keep the water bath below a simmer and off the custard. Egg proteins set gently at moderate heat; a hard boil or steam dripping onto the surface can overcook and curdle the custard, leaving it grainy or pitted.

“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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