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Dessert

Caramel Pudding

A caramel custard made by boiling sugar, mixing eggs and milk, and steaming in a mold.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Dip the lumps of sugar into the water, then place in a saucepan and heat until brown but not burnt.

  2. Add the water and boil until the mixture is thick and syrupy.

Prepare the mold

  1. Prepare a soufflé mold by drying it in the oven, then pour the caramel into it, coating halfway up.

  2. Allow the caramel to cool.

Make and steam the pudding

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and whites with the caster sugar.

  2. Bring the milk to a boil and quickly stir it into the egg mixture.

  3. Pour everything into the prepared mold and steam gently for about an hour until firm.

  4. Make sure the water only simmers after adding 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. 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 body as they firm with gentle heat.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness, helping the pudding hold its shape when steamed.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a tender custard.
Loaf sugar
Melts and browns into the caramel that coats the mold, adding sweetness and colour.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the custard and dissolves easily into the beaten eggs.

The step that matters

Browning the caramel. Sugar moves quickly from amber to bitter, burnt flavour once it darkens too far. Stopping at a rich brown, before it smokes, keeps the caramel sweet and well flavoured.

“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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