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Dessert

Caramel Pudding

A caramel custard made by boiling sugar and water, coating a mold, and steaming a milk and egg yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. Boil the loaf sugar and cold water together until the liquid turns light brown.

  2. Pour the caramel into a charlotte or plain timbale mold, turning it to coat the sides.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks and whites.

  2. Add the caster sugar, flavoring, and milk, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Strain the custard into the mold and cover with greased paper.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam very slowly for about 40 minutes, then carefully turn out the pudding.

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. Milk + eggtop 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and give it a rich, set structure when steamed.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness to the custard as it sets.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs set into a soft custard.
Loaf sugar
Melts and caramelizes into the sauce that coats the mold and becomes the topping.

The step that matters

Steam very slowly. Egg custard turns grainy, full of holes, or watery when cooked too hard or too fast. Gentle, low steam heat lets the proteins set evenly into a smooth, tender pudding.

“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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