Why custard curdles

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Asked 6 years, 10 months ago. Active 4 years, 10 months ago. Viewed 38k times. How can you overcome this simple issue with custard?

Improve this question. What equipment are you using? Can you post your most recent recipe and detail your method? Please list the equipment you used and the method you used. If it was undercooked, then most likely, it was not curdled at all.

Rather, it was in the process of cooking, and what you saw as a partially cooked custard when you removed it from the oven. A curdled custard will look very lumpy. When it is very curdled, it will look like cottage cheese. Something like that. Getting the caramelization without causing curdling is difficult. The amount of sugar in the custard is key. The sugar will trigger the Maillard effect.

Post reply. Ask a Question Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question? Ask a Question. Similar Threads How to compare cheesecake, japanese cheesecake and custard recipes? In the end, time and patience were the saving of the Meyer lemon custard. It came out after an extra 40 minutes of cooking time — thanks to my oven? The starting temperature of the eggs? Who knows. But it was as golden as the sun, and, most importantly, just firm enough.

Taste of Tomorrow Food. The curious chemistry of custard. Share using Email. By Veronique Greenwood 30th September Combine milk, eggs, sugar and gentle heat and one of our most treasured comfort food appears.

But how is this creamy concoction conjured? Veronique Greenwood peers into the pot. Whatever you do, don't just crank the heat up! Microwave method? Making your custard ahead and keeping it warm is a more practical option, but you have to be very careful about temperature.

Custard is an ideal incubator for bacteria, so it must be held at a food safe temperature of degrees Fahrenheit or greater. Unfortunately your custard will curdle at to F, so you need to manage the temperature carefully. Pouring the hot custard into a preheated vacuum container is the simplest answer; the container can hold it at a safe temperature for hours.

When all else fails, do what the professionals do: cheat. Holding custard sauces or warm custard desserts is just as problematic for chefs as it is for home cooks, so restaurants often stabilize their custards with a small amount of starch.

Whisk a small amount of instant-mixing "gravy" flour or cornstarch into your custard recipe's sugar, then go on and make the recipe as you normally would. As the custard comes up to temperature, the starch thickener begins to thicken the liquids, as well.

The mesh of starch molecules helps keep the egg proteins from bonding, reducing the risk of curdling and providing a more heat-stable custard.

If your custard starts to break at any point, you can usually salvage it if you act quickly. Set your mixing bowl in a sink or pan of cold water to quell the heat, then pour your custard through a fine mesh strainer to remove any fine grains of coagulated egg. Separate an egg yolk into a new mixing bowl and whisk it vigorously. Pour your custard into the bowl in a thin stream, just as you did originally with the hot milk.