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Dessert

Custard

A baked custard made with milk, egg yolks, sugar, cream, and flavored with brandy or vanilla.

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

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 ↓

Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, gently heat the milk with a grain or two of salt.

  2. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks and sugar together.

  3. Once the milk is warm, slowly stir it into the egg mixture.

  4. Add the cream and flavor with brandy or vanilla.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a round deep dish and pour in the custard.

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

  3. Simmer gently for 1 to 1.5 hours until firm in the middle.

  4. Serve cold, garnished with chopped macaroons or vanilla.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Brandy + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, 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 as they cook, giving it a firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the egg yolks set into a smooth custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the richness of the yolks and cream.
Cream
Adds fat, which gives the custard a richer, softer texture.

The step that matters

Simmer gently in a water bath. Egg proteins set at temperatures close to boiling, so the custard can curdle or become grainy if cooked too hard. Gentle heat in a water bath, with the water kept off the custard, lets it set evenly and firm in the middle.

“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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