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Sauce

Custard Sauce

A sweet cream custard sauce made with egg yolks, cold cream, and powdered sugar, served with nutmeg or cinnamon.

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

Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Custard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stir the sweet cream in a double saucepan.

  2. If you don't have a double saucepan, place the vessel in boiling water.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with cold cream and powdered sugar.

Make the custard

  1. Pour the hot cream into the egg mixture, stirring back and forth to prevent curdling.

  2. Set the inner saucepan over boiling water and stir continuously until it thickens and is about to boil.

Serve

  1. Serve in a china vessel, topped with grated nutmeg or powdered cinnamon.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Sweet cream
Forms the liquid base and gives the sauce its rich, smooth body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they heat and give it richness and a smooth set.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the custard and dissolves easily into the cold cream and yolks.

The step that matters

Stirring the hot cream into the egg mixture. Adding hot cream too quickly can scramble the egg yolks and cause curdling. Stirring back and forth while pouring blends the heat gradually, so the yolks thicken smoothly.

“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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