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Parmesan Custards

A custard made with eggs, milk, butter, and Parmesan, served on toasted bread and browned with cheese.

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

Parmesan Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add boiling milk, Parmesan, salt, pepper, and cayenne, stirring continuously to prevent the cheese from settling.

  3. Pour the mixture into small buttered molds.

  4. Place the molds in a saucepan with water reaching halfway up the sides.

  5. Simmer gently until set.

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut thin slices of bread and stamp out rounds slightly larger than the molds.

  2. Heat butter in a frying pan and fry the bread until golden.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place one custard on each bread round, top with grated cheese, and brown under a gas burner or in front of a fire.

  2. Serve on lace paper, garnished with parsley or cress.

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

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

  2. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Parmesan cheese + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,322 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Milk + parmesan cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,608 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard into a firm, sliceable structure as they cook.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that gives the custard a soft, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown golden in the pan.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury flavour and salty depth to the custard.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until set. Egg custards turn grainy or watery if boiled hard, because the proteins tighten too fast and squeeze out liquid. Gentle heat in a water bath lets them set evenly and smoothly.

“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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