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Dessert

Caramel Pudding

A sweet pudding made by cooking sugar into caramel, then mixing with egg yolks and milk, and baking until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,696 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Caramel Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the caramel

  1. Boil the loaf sugar with a little water until it becomes a deep brown syrup.

  2. Warm a small basin.

  3. Pour the syrup into the basin, turning it until the inside is completely coated.

Make the custard

  1. Strain the yolks of the eggs and mix them gradually with the milk.

  2. Pour the egg and milk mixture into the prepared basin.

Cook and set

  1. Cover the basin with a piece of paper.

  2. Place the basin in a saucepan of cold water, making sure the water does not cover the top of the basin.

  3. Cover the saucepan.

  4. Cook gently until set.

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 + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. 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

Loaf sugar
Melts and caramelises into the deep brown syrup that coats the basin and flavours the pudding.
Egg yolks
Set the milk into a smooth, sliceable custard as they cook gently.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and keeps it soft and creamy.

The step that matters

Cook gently until set. Egg custard turns grainy or curdled if it cooks too hot or too fast. Gentle heat in a water bath lets the proteins set evenly into a smooth texture.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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