Skip to main content
Dessert

Caramel Pudding

A caramel custard made by baking a milk‑egg mixture with caramelized sugar in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vanilla and milk 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Combine 4 ounces of castor sugar with enough water to moisten it in a small saucepan and stir until it turns brown.

  2. Add a little essence of vanilla and 4 tablespoons of water to the caramel.

  3. Brush the inside of a warm basin with the burnt sugar.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix 1 pint of warm milk with 3 beaten eggs and 4 ounces of loaf sugar.

  2. Pour the milk mixture into the prepared basin.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover the basin with a saucer and a cloth.

  2. Place the basin in a saucepan of boiling water, ensuring the water does not boil into the pudding.

  3. Boil for 35 minutes, then let it cool.

  4. Turn out the pudding and pour the remaining syrup over it.

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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla 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
Set the custard into a firm, sliceable pudding as they cook.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs set into a soft custard.
Castor sugar
Browns to make the caramel that colours and flavours the pudding.

The step that matters

Keeping the water from boiling into the pudding. Gentle, indirect steam cooks the custard evenly. If boiling water splashes or seeps into the basin, the custard becomes watery and pocked, and it may not set smoothly.

“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.

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes