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Dessert

Caramel Custard

A custard dessert made with caramelized sugar, milk, eggs, vanilla, and salt, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Caramel Custard

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Caramel Custard

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Melt and brown 4 cups of sugar carefully until it caramelizes.

  2. Add 1 pint of scalded milk to the melted sugar.

  3. Beat 3 eggs slightly.

  4. Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla and a pinch of salt to the eggs.

  5. Slowly pour the hot milk mixture over the beaten eggs, stirring gently.

  6. Strain the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the strained mixture into buttered cups or a mold.

  2. Set the cups in a pan of hot water.

  3. Bake at 300°F (150°C) until a knife inserted comes out clean.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the caramel sauce, brown ½ cup of sugar.

  2. Add ⅓ cup of hot water to the caramelized sugar and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Serve the custard with the caramel sauce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Vanilla + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Set the custard into a tender structure as they cook with the milk.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and creamy body of the custard.
Sugar
Caramelized for the sauce and sweetens the custard for flavor and color.

The step that matters

Slowly pour the hot milk mixture over the beaten eggs, stirring gently.. Adding hot liquid to eggs too quickly can scramble them. Pouring slowly while stirring gently tempers the eggs so the custard sets smooth.

“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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