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Dessert

Caramel Pudding

A sweet pudding made by caramelizing sugar, boiling milk, adding cornstarch, and setting in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Caramel Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. In a frying pan over low heat, melt the brown sugar until it caramelizes.

  2. Pour the caramel into a saucepan with the milk and bring to a boil without stirring.

Thicken and set

  1. In a small bowl, blend the cornstarch with a little cold milk.

  2. Once the milk and caramel boil, stir in the cornstarch mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it cool.

Serve

  1. Serve with whipped cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Brown sugar
Caramelizes to give the pudding its deep, sweet, toasty flavor and color.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the caramel and starch are combined into.
Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid when heated so the pudding sets firm as it cools.

The step that matters

Bringing the milk and caramel to a boil before adding cornstarch. Cornstarch thickens only when heated to a boil, so the mixture must be boiling before the cornstarch is stirred in. Stirring the caramel and milk without boiling first avoids the risk of a thin, unset pudding.

“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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