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Dessert

Baked Custard

A custard made by baking milk, cinnamon, eggs, sugar, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baked Custard

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Boil 1 quart of milk with a stick of cinnamon.

  2. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

  3. Beat 5 or 6 eggs with 3 tablespoons of sugar.

  4. Stir the milk and egg mixture together.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into custard cups or a single dish.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until set.

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. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 a firm, tender structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs set into a creamy custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the eggs and milk.

The step that matters

Bake in a slow oven until set. Eggs set when heated gently; too much heat makes the proteins tighten and curdle, leaving the custard grainy and watery. A slow oven lets it firm evenly.

“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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