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Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A custard pudding made with egg yolks, corn starch, sugar, milk, and topped with peaches and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Delmonico Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks until light.

  2. Add the sugar and beat until very light.

  3. Mix the corn starch with a little cold milk.

  4. Combine all ingredients.

  5. Stir into 1 quart of milk just before it boils.

  6. Add a little salt.

  7. Stir until the mixture thickens well.

  8. Pour into a dish.

Top and bake

  1. Place in the oven at 350°F (175°C) until it can bear icing.

  2. Top with a layer of canned peaches or other fruit.

  3. Mix the fruit syrup with the custard if desired.

  4. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth with 2 tablespoons of sugar per egg.

  5. Spread the egg whites over the pudding.

  6. Return to the oven until lightly browned.

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 colour.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a set custard as it heats.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff meringue that browns on top of the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the meringue whip and hold its shape.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.

The step that matters

Stirring the custard as it thickens. Corn starch thickens when its granules swell in hot liquid, so the mixture must be stirred constantly near the boil. Otherwise it can scorch on the bottom or form lumps.

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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