Anthony Bourdain's Favorite Dessert Was A Nostalgic Caramel Treat

The late, great Anthony Bourdain was not generally a fan of dessert, having once professed that he's not a good pastry chef or baker, and that if he had to ditch one course from a meal for the rest of his life, it'd be dessert. But that doesn't mean Bourdain hated all desserts. In a 2016 interview with Thrillist, he was still able to pick a favorite: The classic French crème caramel ("caramel cream" in English) — perhaps little surprise considering the chef's well-noted love of French cuisine.

"There's some [desserts] from my childhood that, of course, I have a grip on. You know, my mom's creme caramel. Obscure old Escoffier era stuff that you never see, I kinda like," he told the publication. (Escoffier refers to prolific 19th and 20th-century French chef and writer Auguste Escoffier, commonly referred to as the "king of chefs and chef of kings," and famous for some seriously major contributions to what's now modern-day French cuisine.)

If you're unfamiliar with crème caramel, it's common on the dessert menus of brasseries and traditional French restaurants. It's basically a baked custard, usually with vanilla flavor. You'll encounter a similar dessert in Latin American countries where it goes by the name flan, although that version tends to use condensed milk and sometimes other dairy products. This shouldn't be confused with the flan you might encounter in France, which is a custard treat with a pastry base that you'd usually find in bakeries (crème caramel doesn't feature any pastry).

Crème caramel is a relatively simple dessert in terms of ingredients — it features a custard made of eggs, sugar, vanilla and milk all whipped together and a caramel that's just sugar and water cooked together. The caramel goes in the base of a baking dish like a ramekin and is topped with the custard, and it's then baked in a bain marie (sometimes called a water bath). This means you put the baking dishes in another dish of hot water, and place that whole thing in the oven so that it retains a moist, custardy texture. The dish is usually upended when served so that the caramel coats the top of the dessert on a plate.

While crème caramel is similar to crème brûlée in that the dessert is mostly custard, crème brûlée features a layer of crisp, caramelized sugar on top, while crème caramel has more of a syrupy, saucy caramel. While Escoffier may have popularized crème caramel, these types of desserts have a long history. Baked creams and custards have been traced to at least as far back as medieval France and Spain, and way back in ancient Rome, there is evidence that desserts made with egg and cream existed that were likely a predecessor of sorts — so, Anthony Bourdain was just one in a very, very long line of fans of this classic sweet treat.