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Dessert

Creme Renverse Au Caramel

A caramel custard inverted from a mold, made with sugar, water, butter, vanilla, and custard mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Creme Renverse Au Caramel

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Boil the sugar until it turns golden.

  2. Add a little water.

  3. Reduce the mixture to the soft ball stage.

  4. Pour a thin layer of hot syrup into the bottom of timbale molds.

  5. Let the syrup cool.

Make the custard

  1. Grease the sides of the molds with melted butter or olive oil.

  2. Prepare the custard flavored with vanilla.

  3. Fill the molds with the custard.

  4. Bake the custard as you would for cup custard.

  5. Remove the custard from the water.

  6. Let the custard cool.

Serve

  1. Loosen the custard from the sides with your finger.

  2. Invert the custard onto a serving dish.

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

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

  2. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Granulated sugar
Melts and caramelizes to form the golden syrup that coats the molds and becomes the sauce.
Custard mixture
Sets into a smooth, tender body when baked gently in water.
Vanilla
Adds aroma and flavor to the custard.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar until golden. Sugar caramelizes quickly near its color change point, so it can go from golden to bitter in seconds. Removing it from heat at the right moment gives a pleasant flavor and a syrup that is fluid enough to spread thinly in the molds.

“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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