Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Corn Pop Overs
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the batter
Scald the sweet milk in a saucepan.
Stir in the corn meal and butter until combined.
Add the salt and beaten eggs, mixing well.
Bake
Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.
Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until puffed and golden.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,202 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Milk + corntop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Coffee + corntop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together247 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
- Corn meal
- Provides the body of the pudding, thickening as it cooks and giving it a soft, grainy texture.
- Eggs
- Set as they bake, giving the pudding its structure and holding it together.
- Sweet milk
- Forms the liquid base that cooks with the corn meal and keeps the pudding moist.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth mouthfeel.
The step that matters
Bake until puffed and golden. The eggs set as they bake. Stopping when the top is puffed and golden keeps the custard tender; overbaking makes the eggs tighten, leaving the pudding dry and rubbery.
“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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