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Dessert

Boiled Custard, or Mock Cream

A custard-like dessert made by boiling milk, corn starch, eggs, and sugar, flavored with lemon, vanilla, or raspberry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Custard, or Mock Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until nearly boiling.

  2. Dissolve the corn starch in a little cold milk.

  3. Add the dissolved corn starch to the heated milk.

  4. Beat the eggs in a bowl. Mix the powdered sugar into the beaten eggs.

Make the custard

  1. Add the egg mixture to the saucepan.

  2. Stir the mixture briskly.

  3. Let it boil twice while stirring.

  4. Remove from the heat.

  5. Flavor to taste with lemon, vanilla, or raspberry.

Serve

  1. Serve very cold as a substitute for ice cream.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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

Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth custard as it heats and boils.
Eggs
Set with heat to add body and richness to the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the custard thickens and sets within.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the custard and dissolves easily into the beaten eggs.

The step that matters

Let it boil twice while stirring. Corn starch needs to reach a boil to fully thicken, and constant stirring prevents scorching and lumps. Eggs can curdle if overheated, so stirring keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, milk, egg, butter, sugar. 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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