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Baked Custard in a Saucepan, with Burnt-Sugar Sauce

A custard baked in a saucepan topped with a caramel sauce made from burnt sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Custard in a Saucepan, with Burnt-Sugar Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Whisk 6 eggs and 1 pint of milk together in a bowl and flavor to taste.

Make the caramel

  1. Add a few lumps of white sugar and enough water to moisten it in a small enamel-lined saucepan.

  2. Heat the saucepan on the stove until the sugar turns bright golden; remove it to prevent burning.

  3. Once the sugar is brown, carefully add more water until it reaches a syrupy consistency.

Cook and serve

  1. Swirl the saucepan to coat the sides with caramel, then pour in the custard mixture.

  2. Cover the saucepan with a lid and place hot embers on top; cook gently for the same time as baking.

  3. Serve the custard hot or cold.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a firm, tender custard as they cook, giving the dish its structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs set in, keeping the custard soft and creamy.
White sugar
Melts and darkens into caramel, adding sweetness and a deep toasted flavor.

The step that matters

Heating the sugar to caramel. Sugar darkens quickly once it turns golden and can burn within moments, becoming bitter. Removing the pan from heat as soon as it reaches the right color stops the cooking and keeps the caramel tasting sweet rather than scorched.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, sugar, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, sugar, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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