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Dessert

Caramel Pudding

A sweet pudding made by caramelizing sugar, simmering milk, thickening with cornstarch, and served cold with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Caramel Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Brown the sugar in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Add the milk and bring to a simmer.

  3. Mix the cornstarch with a little milk until smooth, then add to the mixture to thicken.

Serve

  1. Serve very cold with 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Sugar
Browns to form caramel, giving the pudding its deep, sweet flavour.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the pudding.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the pudding its set texture.

The step that matters

Brown the sugar in a skillet over medium heat.. Sugar can go from amber to burnt quickly. Dark, bitter caramel spoils the flavour, so watch the colour closely and stop browning once it is a rich golden amber.

“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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