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Dessert

Burnt Custard Pudding

A custard pudding baked over a layer of caramelized brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg 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 ↓

Burnt Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Cover the bottom of a 2-quart tin pan with damp brown sugar, nearly an inch deep.

  3. Melt the brown sugar on the stovetop.

Make the custard

  1. In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk, eggs, and sugar until combined.

  2. Warm the custard mixture and pour it over the melted sugar without stirring.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake slowly until set.

  2. Once cooled, turn the pudding out onto a plate, bottom side up.

  3. Add a little salt before serving.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Milk and sugar 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 as they cook, giving it a firm, sliceable body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving it its soft, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, melted in the pan, forms the caramel topping on the pudding.
Damp brown sugar
Melts into a dark caramel layer that becomes the top of the pudding when inverted.

The step that matters

Pour the custard without stirring. Pouring the warm custard over the melted sugar without stirring keeps the caramel layer separate from the custard, so it stays on the bottom and sets as a distinct layer when the pudding is turned out.

“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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