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Dessert

A Delmonico Pudding

A custard pudding with peaches, made from egg yolks, corn starch, milk, sugar, and baked with a peach topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and peach work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 781 recipes. Both carry phellandrene, which smells minty. The science ↓

A Delmonico Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks until light, then add the sugar and beat until very light.

  2. Mix the corn starch with a little cold milk, then combine it with the egg mixture.

  3. Stir in the quart of milk just before it boils, adding a little salt.

  4. Stir until the mixture thickens well.

  5. Pour into a dish.

  6. Place in the oven until it can bear icing.

Top and bake

  1. Top with a layer of canned peaches.

  2. Mix the peach syrup with the custard if desired.

  3. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth, adding 2 tablespoons of sugar for each egg.

  4. Bake until light brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + peachtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together94 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness and a yellow colour.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable custard as it heats.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the starch and yolks set.
Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff froth to form a light topping that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the whipped whites hold their structure.

The step that matters

Stir the milk in just before it boils. Cornstarch thickens only when heated, and egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the custard gets too hot too fast. Adding the milk at the right point and stirring steadily keeps the custard smooth while it thickens.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, egg, sugar, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, egg, sugar, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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