Crème caramel, flan, caramel pudding or caramel custard
is a custard dessert with a layer of clear caramel sauce.
The origin of crème caramel (also known originally as flan) can be
traced all the way back to the
Roman Empire . Originally, this dish was
called tiropatinam and it was made with eggs, milk and pepper and it was
seasoned in its savoury version with fish, eel, spinach... although
there was also a sweet version with honey. It was in the early Middle
Ages, in Spain, when they started using only the ingredients from which
the original recipe is made today, and introduced caramelised sugar into
the mixture and to call it flan, which comes from the proto-germanic
'flado'.