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Dessert

Caramel Pudding

A sweet custard made with caramel, milk, cornstarch, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 in a pan to create caramel, then carefully add the boiling water.

Thicken the milk

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the cornstarch, salt, and cold milk.

  2. Add the cornstarch mixture to the hot scalded milk and cook until it thickens.

  3. Stir in the caramel and continue cooking, stirring constantly, until there is no taste of raw starch.

Set and serve

  1. Add vanilla, then pour the mixture into a moistened mold.

  2. 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. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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 toffee flavor.
Cornstarch
Thickens the scalded milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its set body.
Milk
Forms the base of the pudding, providing moisture and the body that the starch thickens.

The step that matters

Cook until no raw starch taste remains. Cornstarch must be cooked long enough, with constant stirring, for its starch granules to swell fully and thicken. Stopping early leaves a raw, floury taste and a weaker set.

“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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