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Dessert

Caramel Pudding

A custard made from milk, sugar, flour, eggs, caramel, walnuts, baked and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Caramel Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add sugar, egg yolks, and flour to the boiling milk and cook thoroughly.

  3. Stir in caramel until the flavor suits your taste.

Make the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add granulated sugar and beat until stiff again.

  3. Fold in the chopped walnuts.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  2. Sprinkle caramel on top.

  3. Brown in the oven.

  4. Serve cold with cream and sugar.

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. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + walnuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that sets when cooked.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites beaten stiff give the pudding lift and structure.
Flour
Thickens the boiled milk so the custard holds its body.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, beaten into the whites, stabilizes the meringue.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavor against the soft pudding.

The step that matters

Cook the custard thoroughly after adding the yolks and flour. Egg yolks must be heated enough to thicken the milk and set the custard, but overheating can curdle them. Stirring steadily while the mixture cooks keeps it smooth and fully thickened.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, flour, egg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Milletfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, flour, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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