Cambridge Burnt Cream

There's a sound you want to hear: the small, firm crack of a spoon breaking through the caramel crust and into the cold custard beneath. Not a crash. A crack. A clean break that gives way to something silky and vanilla-scented and slow. That sound is the whole point of this pudding.

Trinity College in Cambridge has been serving burnt cream since 1879, and the French have been making their version of the same idea for even longer than that. I won't get into whose came first. It doesn't matter. What matters is that a cold vanilla custard under a sheet of burnt sugar is one of the more civilised things you can put in front of someone at the end of a dinner.

This is a pudding for cold weather and dinner parties and evenings that deserve a bit of quiet ceremony. Late autumn onwards, when the clocks have gone back and the dining room needs candles by six. It asks very little of you: cream, egg yolks, vanilla, sugar, patience. The patience is the hardest part. The custards need to chill properly, overnight if you can manage it, and the sugar goes on at the last possible minute.

I wrote it down in the notebook years ago with a note in the margin: keep the custard pale, burn the top hard. Still the best advice I have for this one. We're only making dinner, and the dinner happens to end with something quietly splendid.