The sweet satisfaction of a burnt Cambridge cream

If a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, then a Trinity or Cambridge burnt cream must taste as sweet as its French twin, the crème brûlée. The two cooked custard dishes are essentially identical: an egg yolk-rich baked custard served cold and topped with a layer of hard caramel.

Both are similar to the crema Catalana you find throughout Spain (known as ‘crema cremada’ in Catalan cuisine), but Catalana is made with milk rather than cream. It means it is lighter, and tends to have a thinner, paler caramel layer. Lemon or orange zest and a cinnamon stick are often used as flavouring for the Spanish pudding, whereas a burnt cream or crème brûlée is traditionally only flavoured with vanilla.

The British version comes from Trinity College, Cambridge. Rabble-rousers would have you believe that there’s a debate as to which came first, the Cambridge burnt cream or the crème brûlée, but that’s not reallytrue.