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Dessert

Caramel Pudding

A caramel-flavored custard made with egg yolks, milk, and a deep brown sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Caramel Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Boil the sugar with water until it turns deep brown.

  2. Warm a small basin. Pour the syrup into the basin and turn the basin until coated.

Make the custard

  1. Strain the yolks from the whites of the eggs and mix with the milk.

  2. Pour the mixture into the prepared mold. Cover the mold with paper.

Steam and serve

  1. Place the mold in a saucepan of cold water without submerging it. Cover the saucepan.

  2. Simmer gently for 1 hour. Remove the saucepan.

  3. Let the pudding cool completely. Carefully turn out the pudding.

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

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

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

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

  3. 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

Egg yolks
Set the custard into a firm, creamy structure as they cook gently.
Sugar
Melts and browns into the caramel that coats the mold and sweetens the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the yolks set into a smooth custard.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar until deep brown. Sugar darkens quickly once it passes golden, so it can turn bitter if overcooked. Stopping at deep brown gives caramel flavour without burnt notes.

“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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