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Dessert

Soft Custard

A custard made from milk, egg yolks, sugar, salt, and vanilla, cooked until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Soft Custard

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Soft Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, sugar, and salt.

  3. Slowly add the hot milk to the mixture.

  4. Cook the mixture over hot water, stirring constantly, until it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.

Finish and cool

  1. Strain the custard.

  2. Cool it.

  3. Add the vanilla extract.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set gently with heat, giving it body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the egg yolks thicken into a custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the set of the custard.

The step that matters

Cooking over hot water while stirring constantly. Egg yolks thicken as proteins set with heat, but if they get too hot they can curdle or scramble. Gentle heat and constant stirring keep the custard smooth until it coats the back of a spoon.

“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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