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Dessert

Plain Boiled Custard

A simple custard made by boiling milk, thickening with flour, and adding egg and flavorings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Plain Boiled Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour with a little cold milk until smooth.

  3. Add the flour mixture to the boiling milk and stir until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

  5. Beat the egg in a separate bowl and add to the cooled mixture.

  6. Return to heat and stir constantly until thickened, but do not let it boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Add flavoring and optional spices 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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into the custard.
Flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells when heated.
Egg
Adds richness and sets the custard as it heats gently.

The step that matters

Return to heat without boiling. Egg proteins set and thicken the custard when gently heated, but if it boils they can curdle and turn grainy. Stir constantly over low heat and stop once it thickens.

Swap the cinnamon

The recipe marks cinnamon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, egg, sugar, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, egg, sugar, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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