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Dessert

Caramel Pudding

A sweet pudding made by caramelizing sugar, mixing with milk and corn starch, then setting and serving with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Caramel Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil until the mixture starts to caramelize.

Make the pudding

  1. Heat the milk in another pot until it boils.

  2. Dissolve corn starch in a small amount of cold milk.

  3. Add the corn starch mixture to the boiling milk.

  4. Stir the two boiling mixtures together until well mixed.

  5. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it set.

Serve

  1. Serve with whipped cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 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

Sugar
Caramelizes to form the sweet, colored syrup that flavors the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the pudding and gives it a creamy body.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk as it heats so the pudding sets firm when cooled.

The step that matters

Boil until the mixture starts to caramelize. Sugar darkens quickly once it starts to color, and going too far turns it bitter. Stop as soon as it reaches the desired amber color.

“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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