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Dessert

Boiled Custard

A custard made by heating milk, whisking eggs with sugar and salt, and slowly combining, then cooking until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Beat the eggs with the sugar and salt until creamy.

  3. When the milk is boiling, gradually pour it into the egg mixture while stirring briskly.

  4. Strain the mixture back into the saucepan and return it to the heat, ensuring it does not boil.

  5. Stir constantly until the custard thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and add flavoring to taste.

  2. Allow to cool before serving.

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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving it body and thickness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a smooth custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the flavor of the eggs and milk.

The step that matters

Keep the custard below a boil while it thickens. Egg proteins set gently as the mixture heats; if it boils, they can curdle and turn grainy, so stir constantly and keep the heat moderate.

“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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