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Dessert

Boiled Custard

A custard made by simmering milk with lemon peel and bay leaf, sweetened, then thickened with beaten egg yolks and whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the milk

  1. In a clean saucepan, simmer the milk with lemon peel and bay leaf.

  2. Sweeten the milk to taste.

Make the custard

  1. While gently boiling, add the beaten yolks of four eggs and the whites of two eggs.

  2. Continue stirring until the custard thickens, then remove from heat.

  3. Stir the custard until it cools.

  4. Strain the milk before adding the eggs and pass the eggs through a sieve.

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 + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a smooth custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as their proteins set with gentle heat, adding richness.
Egg whites
Add extra protein that helps the custard thicken and set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the richness of the milk and eggs.

The step that matters

Keep the milk gently boiling while adding the eggs and stirring. Egg proteins set when heated, so stirring constantly while the eggs go in keeps them dispersed and smooth. If the heat is too high or the stirring stops, the eggs can scramble into curds instead of thickening the custard evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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