Skip to main content
Dessert

Boiled Custard

A simple custard made by heating milk, whisking eggs with sugar and salt, then combining and cooking until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan over medium heat until boiling.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar and salt until creamy.

  3. Gradually pour the boiling milk into the egg mixture while stirring briskly.

  4. Strain the mixture back into the saucepan and return to low heat.

  5. Stir constantly until the custard thickens, but do not let it boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and add flavoring to taste.

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

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

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

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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 custard as they set when gently heated, giving it body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a smooth custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the eggs for a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Stir constantly until the custard thickens, but do not let it boil. Egg proteins set with gentle heat, but boiling can overcook them, causing curdling and a grainy texture. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly so the custard thickens smoothly.

“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.

More boiled custard recipes

Pudding 12Rich 6 See all 257 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes