Custard Powder

Food · Pantry & Condiment · Food, Typed Supps

It is cornflour with colour and vanilla in it. Everything nutritious in the finished bowl comes from the milk.

Stage by stage

Intake (Mouth): Salivary amylase begins hydrolysing the already-gelatinised starch.
Pause (Stomach): Gastric acid inactivates salivary amylase; starch digestion largely waits.
Digestion (Small intestine): Pancreatic amylase and brush-border enzymes reduce the starch to glucose for absorption.
Handling (Liver and circulation): Glucose enters the portal circulation; the milk it was made with determines how sharply.

Time to effect

Under an hour: Blood glucose rises within roughly 30 to 45 minutes, later and more slowly when made with whole milk.

Allergens

Contains: Eggs, Milk. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.

Eating patterns

Fits: Halal, Kosher, Gluten-free. Depends on the product: Vegetarian, Pescatarian.

Satiety

Not scored: the satiety index is measured on 240 kcal servings, and nobody eats a 240 kcal serving of this. The question does not apply rather than the answer being unknown.

Environmental footprint

3.2 kg CO2e and 628 litres of freshwater per kg, matched to "Milk" in Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science 360.

Cost band

Mid — roughly £5 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.

Key nutrients

Starch
Sodium

Nutrition per 100g

Calories: 338
Protein: 0.5g
Carbohydrate: 81.5g
of which sugars: 0.4g
Fat: 0.4g
of which saturated: 0.1g
Fibre: 0.5g
Sodium: 392mg

Food vs. supplement

There is nothing to supplement around here. If custard is being used to get energy and protein into someone with a poor appetite, the lever is the milk it is made with — full-cream, or fortified with milk powder — not the powder.

Kitchen tip

Slake the powder with a little cold milk into a smooth paste before adding the hot milk. Dropping dry powder into hot liquid gelatinises the outside of each clump before the inside is wetted, which is exactly how lumps form.

Common myth

“Custard powder is a convenient version of custard.” In reality: It is a different food with the same name. Real custard is thickened by egg yolk protein and carries the egg's fat, protein and choline; the powder is maize starch with colour and flavour, and contains no egg at all.