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Dessert

Boiled Custard

A custard made by boiling milk with cinnamon and sugar, then tempering with eggs and cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Boiled Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk, cinnamon, and sugar together.

  2. Beat the yolks of three eggs with the white of one and strain into another dish.

  3. When the milk boils, remove it from the heat and pour it onto the eggs, stirring constantly.

  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring until thickened.

  5. Transfer to a basin and stir until cool and thick.

  6. For a gentler method, place the milk and egg mixture in a jar in a saucepan of hot water, stirring until thick.

  7. Once thick, remove the jar from the hot water and stir until nearly cold.

Serve

  1. Pour into custard glasses and grate a little nutmeg on top 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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 + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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
Egg proteins set as they heat, thickening the milk into a custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the egg proteins thicken into a smooth custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the eggs and milk.

The step that matters

Pour the boiled milk onto the eggs while stirring constantly. Adding hot milk too quickly or without stirring can heat the egg proteins unevenly, causing them to scramble into lumps instead of forming a smooth custard.

“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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