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Dessert

Caramel Baked Custard

A custard baked with a caramel base.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Caramel Baked Custard

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the caramel

  1. Cook ½ cup sugar and ¼ cup water over medium heat until brown to make caramel.

  2. Use the caramel while warm.

  3. Pour the caramel into a buttered pudding dish.

  4. Let the caramel harden.

Cook the sugar

  1. Mix ½ cup granulated sugar with 1 tablespoon of water and cook the mixture over medium heat until brown.

  2. Shake the mixture to prevent burning.

Bake the custard

  1. Pour the custard mixture into the hardened caramel.

  2. Bake in a pan of water at 350°F (175°C) until firm, about 30 minutes.

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

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

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. 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

Eggs
Set and firm the custard as they cook, giving it structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving it a soft, creamy texture.
Granulated sugar
Browns to make the caramel and adds sweetness to the custard.

The step that matters

Cooking the sugar until brown. Sugar can go from amber to burnt very quickly over heat. Shaking the pan spreads the heat evenly and prevents burning, which would make the caramel bitter.

“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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