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Dessert

Plain Custards

A custard made with peach leaves, milk, cinnamon, eggs, and sugar, baked in a water bath.

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

Plain Custards

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard base

  1. Boil peach leaves and cinnamon in milk for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the milk and let it cool completely.

  3. Beat the eggs lightly and gradually stir them into the cold milk.

  4. Add sugar gradually and mix well.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill cups with the mixture and place them in a Dutch oven.

  2. Pour boiling water around the cups until nearly full.

  3. Cover with a heated lid and bake for 20 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

  4. Serve cold with grated nutmeg on top.

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. Peach + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Peach + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Set the custard as they cook, giving it a firm yet tender body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs set into a smooth custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds softness to its texture.
Peach leaves
Infused into the milk to add a subtle almond-like aroma.
Cinnamon stick
Infused into the milk to add warm, aromatic flavour.

The step that matters

Bake in a water bath. Surrounding the cups with boiling water moderates the oven heat so the eggs set gently. Too much heat or overbaking makes the custard curdle, weep or turn grainy.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cinnamon, egg, sugar, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, egg, sugar, nutmeg. 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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