We're near Santa Maria del Mar (Canvis Vells, 2, Barcelona) to discover the small shop specializing in Catalan cream. It's called Sucre Cremat, and they offer a 150ml tub of the creamy dessert topped with a thin layer of crunchy sugar for five euros. The establishment has a subtitle: "Authentic Catalan cream." Who had the brilliant idea of creating a special shop featuring the most representative desserts of our land? Who saw the potential and gastronomic joy of Catalan cream? A Brazilian and a Portuguese woman.

The recipe for the Granja Viader custard is from Mercè Casademunt Viader's great-grandmother. It's a family recipe, which they don't have written down, but it's how they've always made it, because it was explained to them. They start by flavoring the milk with cinnamon sticks and lemon peels. And when the milk is flavored, with that aroma that the milk should give off, they place it, cold, especially cold, in a bain-marie. That is, they put it inside a larger pot with water that will cover the sides of the pot containing the flavored milk. Then they add the remaining ingredients, which are the eggs and cornstarch, and let it thicken gradually. When it's cooked, with the texture that the custard should have, they place it in clay tartlets, burn it with an iron griddle, and serve it with sponge cakes. "Each little casserole dish, we sell it for 5.25 euros, and it's true that in March, around Sant Josep, we sell a lot, but we make it all year round, because people always ask for it," explains Mercè, who adds that above all what they notice about Sant Josep are the orders, because people order to take home like so many safas. Throughout, Mercè has called it a burn, "because that's what it's always been called," and that's how it's written on the menu. In other words, no "Catalan cream," Mercè continues, and we entertain ourselves with this topic for a while, because Mercè is absolutely right. In the normative dictionary of the Institute of Catalan Studies, it is simplycream. "If the cream, off the heat, is covered with a light layer of sugar and toasted with a hot iron, it is calledburnt creameitherburning of Saint Joseph"These are the traditional names in Catalan and the ones that should be used as genuine," Cristina Bofill Caralt, the Head of the Terminology Research Area of Termcat.