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Custard Song

A baked custard made with milk and eggs, cooked in cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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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 ↓

Custard Song

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Break the eggs into a bowl and beat them well.

  3. Combine the beaten eggs with the milk.

  4. Pour the mixture into cups.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the cups in a pan filled with water.

  2. Bake for half an hour until they are cooked and lightly browned.

  3. Check with a straw to ensure they are not raw.

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

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

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 tender structure as they cook.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that gives the custard its soft, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Baking in a water bath. Eggs set gently when heat is moderate and surrounded by water. Too much direct heat can make custard curdle or turn rubbery and full of bubbles.

“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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