Name: Maple Custard
Ingredients: 5 eggs; ½ cup maple syrup; ¼ teaspoon salt; 3 cups milk

Why it works: Maple syrup and milk work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 798 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Maple Custard

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

5 eggs
½ cup maple syrup
¼ teaspoon salt
3 cups milk

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard

Beat the eggs until fluffy.
Add maple syrup, salt, and milk; mix well.
Strain the mixture into buttered cups.

Bake and serve

Place the cups in a pan of hot water.
Bake at 300°F (150°C) until the centers are firm.
Chill thoroughly, then unmold onto lace paper.

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.

Maple syrup + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together798 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + maple syruptop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,156 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 firm, sliceable structure as they cook.
Milk: Provides the liquid base that the eggs thicken as it heats.
Maple syrup: Adds sweetness and maple flavor to the custard.

The step that matters

Bake at 300°F (150°C) until the centers are firm. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Overbaking forces out water and makes the custard grainy and weepy, so the centers should be checked as they firm rather than left for a fixed time.

“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.