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Caramel Pudding

A caramel custard baked with a meringue topping.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel custard

  1. Burn the sugar in a saucepan until brown.

  2. Stir in the hot milk gradually.

  3. Pour the mixture over the beaten yolks of the eggs and vanilla, stirring constantly.

  4. Place the mixture in a bowl set in a pan of water and bake for about 10 minutes.

Top and serve

  1. Make a meringue with the egg whites and powdered sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue on top of the pudding.

  3. Bake quickly for a few minutes until the meringue is brown.

  4. Serve cold with sweet 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. Milk + vanillatop 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. Egg + milktop 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

Sugar
Burned to make the caramel that gives the pudding its color and flavor.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard while whites whip into the meringue topping.
Hot milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the eggs set into.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps it stay stable while it bakes.

The step that matters

Stir constantly while adding the milk to the yolks. Hot liquid poured onto egg yolks can scramble them if they are not stirred constantly. Keeping the mixture moving distributes the heat evenly so the yolks thicken into a smooth custard rather than curdling.

“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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