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Dessert

Caramel Pudding

A caramel-flavored custard made with sugar, milk, vanilla, and eggs, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 Pudding

six cups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel base

  1. Brown 3 tablespoons of sugar in an iron saucepan until syrup forms.

  2. Add ½ cup milk and 1 teaspoon vanilla to the syrup.

  3. Beat 3 eggs in a bowl and mix with the syrup mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into six cups.

  2. Place the cups in a pan of hot water and cook for 20 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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Syrup + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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 as they cook, giving it body and a firm, sliceable texture.
Sugar
Browns to form the caramel syrup that gives the pudding its flavour and colour.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the eggs set in, keeping the custard soft and creamy.

The step that matters

Browning the sugar to syrup. Sugar burns quickly once it darkens, turning bitter. Stop at a rich amber syrup so the caramel flavour is pleasant and not acrid.

“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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