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Dessert

Caramel Pudding

A sweet pudding made with caramel, milk, egg, and vanilla, thickened with cornstarch.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Melt the brown sugar to caramel and gradually add the boiling water.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the cornstarch, salt, and cold milk, then add to the hot milk.

  2. Cook in a double boiler, stirring until it thickens.

  3. Add the caramel and cook for 45 minutes, stirring every ten minutes.

  4. Five minutes before removing from heat, add the well-beaten egg.

  5. Flavor the mixture, then turn it into a glass dish.

Serve

  1. Once cold, serve with sugar and cream or custard 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

Brown sugar
Caramelizes to give the pudding its characteristic sweetness and deep color.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Egg
Adds richness and helps set the pudding as it cooks into the mixture.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that thickens into the pudding.

The step that matters

Cook the thickened base slowly with regular stirring. Cornstarch must be heated enough to swell and thicken, but stirring keeps it from scorching or forming lumps on the bottom of the pan. Adding the egg near the end, with the heat controlled, keeps it smooth rather than curdled.

“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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