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Dessert

White Custard

A custard made with egg whites, sugar, milk, cream, and flavored with lemon or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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White Custard

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

White Custard

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk and cream together.

  2. Gently stir the sugar into the egg whites without beating or frothing.

  3. Slowly add the hot milk and cream mixture to the egg and sugar mixture.

  4. Flavor with lemon or vanilla extract.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into cups and place the cups in a pan of boiling water.

  2. Set the pan in a cool oven and add fire to bake until light brown, about 20 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Egg whites
Provide the main structure, setting into a firm, tender custard as they cook.
Milk
Supplies liquid and richness, helping the custard stay soft and smooth.
Cream
Adds fat for a richer, silkier texture in the set custard.
White sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps it brown lightly on the surface.

The step that matters

Slowly add the hot milk and cream mixture to the egg and sugar mixture.. Adding hot liquid too quickly can scramble the egg whites. Pouring slowly while stirring gently keeps the custard smooth and evenly set.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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