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Dessert

Caramel Custard

A custard made with caramelized sugar, scalded milk, eggs, salt, vanilla, baked and chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Caramel Custard

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 Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Caramelize sugar in an iron omelet pan, stirring constantly until melted and light brown.

  2. Slowly add the scalded milk to the caramel, being careful not to let it boil over.

  3. Once the sugar is dissolved, slowly mix the caramel milk into the slightly beaten eggs.

  4. Add salt and vanilla extract, then strain the mixture into a buttered baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake as you would a custard until set, then chill before serving with caramel sauce.

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

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Vanilla + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Coagulate when heated, setting the custard into a sliceable structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and creamy texture of the custard.
Sugar
Caramelizes to form the sweet, amber flavor and coating for the dish.

The step that matters

Adding the caramel to the milk. Hot milk poured into caramel can bubble up violently and seize the sugar into lumps. Adding it slowly, with care, keeps the caramel smooth and prevents boil-over.

“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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