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Dessert

Caramel Pudding

A sweet pudding made with white and brown sugar, milk, corn starch, and vanilla flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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. Combine white sugar and brown sugar in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring until browned.

Make the pudding

  1. Add milk to the saucepan and bring to a simmer.

  2. Dissolve corn starch in a small amount of cold milk, then add to the simmering mixture.

  3. Stir until thickened, then add vanilla flavoring.

  4. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it cool.

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. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. 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

White sugar
Melts and browns to form the caramel flavour and colour.
Brown sugar
Adds deeper caramel flavour and extra browning to the base.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the pudding and carries the sweetness.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the pudding its set.

The step that matters

Stir until thickened. Cornstarch must be dissolved in cold milk first and stirred while the mixture simmers. Stirring keeps it smooth, and the starch only thickens fully once it has been heated, so stopping too early leaves the pudding thin.

“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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