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Dessert

Boiled Custard

A sweet custard made by heating milk, sugar, and eggs, thickened with cornstarch and finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Ingredients

Directions

Heat the base

  1. In a double boiler, heat the milk with the salt and butter.

  2. Mix the cornstarch with a little cold milk until smooth.

  3. When the milk is ready to boil, stir in the cornstarch mixture.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar, then add to the mixture and cook until thick.

  2. Just before removing from heat, fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites or pour the custard over them.

  3. Serve with fruit or use as a base for other desserts.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they cook into the milk.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the custard body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the thickeners set into a custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and softens the flavor of the yolks.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother mouthfeel and a rounder flavor.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until thick. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the heat is too high or they are stirred too little, while cornstarch only thickens fully once the mixture reaches a boil. Heat gently and stir constantly to keep the custard smooth.

“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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