Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Boiled Custard
Ingredients
Directions
Make the custard
Scald 1 quart of milk in a saucepan.
Sweeten the milk to taste.
In a bowl, mix ½ pint of cold milk with 5 well-beaten eggs.
Stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk.
Strain the mixture if desired, then flavor it.
Pour the custard into a dish.
Decorate and serve
Beat the whites of 3 eggs with jelly and spread on top for decoration.
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.
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
- Thicken the milk as they set when heated, giving the custard its body.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into custard.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the custard to taste.
- Egg whites
- Whipped to form a soft topping that holds the jelly decoration.
The step that matters
Stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk. Egg proteins set with heat, so adding the eggs to very hot milk can scramble them. Stirring steadily while pouring in the mixture helps keep the custard smooth.
“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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