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Dessert

Flan Anglais Au Caramel

A custard dessert flavored with eggs, milk, and caramelized sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg 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 ↓

Flan Anglais Au Caramel

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Make a custard by combining the egg yolks, egg whites, milk, and your choice of flavoring.

Make the caramel

  1. In a small enamel-lined pan, add the sugar and just enough water to moisten it.

  2. Heat the pan on the stove until the sugar turns a bright gold color, then remove it to prevent burning.

  3. Once the sugar is a nice brown, add more water until it no longer tastes watery or syrupy.

  4. Swirl the pan to coat the sides with caramel, then pour in the custard.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the pan with a lid and place hot embers on top.

  2. Cook gently for at least 30 minutes.

  3. Serve 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 + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar 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
Enrich the custard and give it a smooth, set texture as it cooks.
Egg whites
Add protein that helps the custard set firm when gently cooked.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs set into a creamy custard.
White sugar
Melts and browns to form the caramel that coats the pan and sweetens the flan.

The step that matters

Heating the sugar to caramel. Sugar darkens quickly and can burn bitterly once past golden brown. Removing the pan at the right colour prevents a bitter caramel, which would spoil the flavour of the flan.

“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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