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Dessert

Caramel Custards

A custard baked in a water bath, topped with a caramel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Caramel Custards

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the caramel

  1. In a skillet, melt ⅓ cup granulated sugar over heat until deep amber.

  2. Pour 1 tablespoon of caramel into each custard cup, swirling it around the sides quickly.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs until light.

  2. Add ¼ cup sugar and beat briefly.

  3. Stir in 1 pint milk until the sugar dissolves.

  4. Fill each cup about ¾ full with custard.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the cups in a pan of boiling water, almost as deep as the custard.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until set.

  3. Remove from the oven, turn out of the cups immediately, and let cool.

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Eggs
Coagulate when heated, setting the custard into a firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and moisture that the egg proteins set within.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the caramel melt and flavor the dish.

The step that matters

Bake in a water bath until just set. Gentle, indirect heat from the surrounding water keeps egg proteins from over-coagulating, which would make the custard grainy or watery. Remove it once it is just set, since carryover heat finishes the job.

“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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