Catalonia's favorite dessert is a custard of milk and egg yolks, thickened with a little cornstarch and perfumed with lemon peel and cinnamon, then topped with sugar that is burned until it sets into a thin amber pane. Catalans also call it crema de Sant Josep, because it is the traditional sweet for Saint Joseph's day on the 19th of March. Visitors tend to compare it with French crème brûlée; Catalans tend to point out, courteously and at length, which of the two came first.

Unlike its French cousin, it is cooked on the stove rather than baked, so it needs no water bath and no oven. Make the custards the day before, keep them cold, and burn the sugar at the last moment. In Barcelona, home of the Spanish Grand Prix for 35 years, it is how a good lunch ends.

The custard

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups (600 ml) whole milk
• 1 unwaxed lemon
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 5 large egg yolks
• 1/3 cup (65 g) sugar
• 2 tablespoons (16 g) cornstarch

The burnt sugar top

Ingredients

• 6 tablespoons (75 g) sugar

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