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Dessert

Caramel Pudding. Pouding Au Caramel.

A caramel-flavored custard made with egg yolks, milk, and a browned sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Pudding. Pouding Au Caramel.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Boil the sugar with water until it turns deep brown.

  2. Warm a small basin and pour the syrup into it, turning the basin to coat the inside.

Make and cook the pudding

  1. Strain the yolks of the eggs and mix them with the milk.

  2. Pour the mixture into the prepared basin and cover with paper.

  3. Place the basin in a saucepan of cold water, ensuring the water doesn't cover the top.

  4. Cover the saucepan and simmer gently for one hour.

  5. Remove the saucepan and let the water cool completely.

Serve

  1. Carefully turn out the pudding from the basin.

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. Sugar + eggtop 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

Egg yolks
Set the custard and give it a rich, smooth texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and keeps it soft and moist.
Loaf sugar
Melts and browns into the caramel that coats the basin and sweetens the pudding.
Egg whites
Add structure, giving a firmer pudding when included.

The step that matters

Simmer gently in the water bath. Eggs set into a smooth custard only at moderate heat. Boiling or a vigorous simmer can cause the custard to curdle and turn spongy or pitted.

“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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