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Dessert

Cheese Custard

A baked custard made with bread crumbs, cheese, milk, butter, salt, cayenne, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Mix the bread crumbs and cheese in a bowl.

  2. Add the hot milk, melted butter, salt, and cayenne; stir well.

  3. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl, then add them to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish and bake until firm.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the hot milk and give the custard body and a soft, tender texture.
Grated cheese
Adds rich savory flavor and fat, and melts into the custard.
Hot milk
Provides moisture and softens the crumbs so the mixture can set evenly.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish and bake until firm. Eggs set through gentle, sustained heat. Overbaking forces the proteins to tighten and squeeze out liquid, leaving the custard dry and rubbery. Pull it when the center is just firm and still slightly wobbly, since it keeps setting as it cools.

“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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