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Dessert

Caramel Custaed

A sweet custard made with milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and caramelized sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Caramel Custaed

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Melt the sugar until the water is evaporated.

  2. Gradually add the scalded milk to the melted sugar.

  3. Stir in the slightly beaten eggs, salt, and vanilla.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and bake as custard.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Set and firm the custard as they cook, giving it structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and adds moisture and creaminess to the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and caramelizes into the golden syrup that coats the mold.
Vanilla
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Melt the sugar until the water is evaporated. Sugar must be cooked until it turns golden without burning. Once the water has left, sugar caramelizes at high heat, and if it goes too far it turns dark and bitter.

“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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