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Dessert

Pastry Cream or Custard

A thick milk custard thickened with flour, sugar, eggs, butter, and lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Pastry Cream or Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a pot, bring the milk and butter to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour and sugar thoroughly, then sprinkle them into the boiling milk while continuously beating.

  3. Keep stirring until it reaches the boiling point again without scorching.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the eggs.

  5. Cover and let simmer slowly for 20 minutes or until well cooked.

Finish

  1. Flavor the cream after it cools.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

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

Flour
Starch that thickens the milk into a smooth, spoonable cream as it cooks.
Eggs
Proteins that set during cooking and add richness and body to the cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the cream smooth and tender.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour and eggs thicken into cream.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and smooth texture.

The step that matters

Keep stirring while the milk comes back to a boil. Flour settles and scorches on the bottom of the pot if it is not stirred constantly, and lumps form if it is added without continuous beating. Starch must be fully cooked to thicken properly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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