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Caramel Custard

A sweet custard made with caramelized sugar, eggs, milk, and salt, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Caramel Custard

Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Caramel Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Melt ½ cup sugar in a pan without adding water until it caramelizes.

Make the custard

  1. Beat together 4 eggs, 4 tablespoons sugar, and ⅓ teaspoon salt in a bowl.

  2. Scald 1 pint of rich milk and pour it over the egg mixture.

  3. Add the caramel syrup to the mixture and stir well.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into molds and place them in a baking pan filled with water.

  2. Bake until a knife inserted comes out clean.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 the custard into a tender, sliceable structure as they cook.
Rich milk
Provides the liquid and richness that give the custard its smooth, creamy body.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, melted, forms the caramel that coats the molds.

The step that matters

Bake until a knife inserted comes out clean. Egg proteins set as the custard heats, and overbaking makes it curdle and turn grainy. Stop when a knife comes out clean, since the custard continues to firm as it cools.

“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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