and little by little you pour in some milk,
about [3 cups/750 ml]. Add a little stick
cinnamon, and chopped green citron
peel.... Put on the stovetop and stir
continuously, taking care that your cream
doesn’t stick to the bottom. When it is well
cooked, place a platter on the stove, pour
the cream onto it, and cook it again until
you see it stick to the platter rim. Then
remove from the heat and sugar it well:
take the fire iron, good and red, and burn
the cream so that it takes on a fine gold
color.
— F. Massialot, Le Cuisinier roial et
bourgeois, 1692
A few decades later, Vincent La
Chapelle plagiarized Massialot’s recipe for
his own version of crème brûlée, which
comes close to the modern crème caramel.
La Chapelle copies Massialot word for
word up to the point that the cream is