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Dessert

Amber Custard

A custard made with eggs, plum jelly, sugar, flour, sweet milk, and 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 ↓

Amber Custard

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the plum jelly, sugar, flour, and sweet milk.

  2. Melt the butter and add it to the mixture, stirring until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for about 30-40 minutes, or until set.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Plum + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together406 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Set the custard into a sliceable structure as they cook and coagulate.
Plum jelly
Adds fruity sweetness and flavor, and some moisture, to the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and softens its texture.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and helps it hold its body while baking.
Sweet milk
Provides liquid and body that the eggs set into a custard.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Baking until just set. Egg proteins set as they heat, and overbaking makes them tighten and weep or curdle. Bake only until the custard is set, so it stays smooth and tender.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Plumthe original

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