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Sauce

Custard Sauce

A sweet sauce made from milk, sugar, cornstarch, egg yolks, and vanilla extract.

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

Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Custard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks until light.

  2. Combine the egg yolks with the milk.

  3. Pour the mixture into a double boiler.

  4. Add the sugar and cornstarch, stirring until thickened.

  5. Remove from heat and add the extract.

Serve

  1. Serve hot or cold.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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 sauce and add richness as they set gently with heat.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, glossy sauce as it heats.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the yolks and starch thicken.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the richness of the yolks.

The step that matters

Add the sugar and cornstarch, stirring until thickened. Cornstarch needs to reach a simmer while stirred to swell and thicken evenly; stopping early leaves a thin sauce, and the yolks can scramble if the heat is too high.

“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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