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Dessert

Cornstarch Pudding

A milk pudding thickened with cornstarch, sweetened with powdered sugar and currant jelly, served with a whipped egg white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Cornstarch Pudding

Why it works: Milk and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,475 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Cornstarch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Reserve ½ cup of milk from the quart.

  2. Heat the remaining milk in a double boiler.

  3. Mix cornstarch and salt with the reserved milk.

  4. Stir the mixture into the boiling milk.

  5. Beat well for 2 minutes.

  6. Cover the boiler.

  7. Cook the pudding for 12 minutes.

  8. Pour the pudding into a dish.

  9. Cool for 30 minutes.

Make the topping and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. Gradually mix in the powdered sugar until well combined.

  3. Add the currant jelly or your choice of preserved fruit.

  4. Serve the pudding with the sauce or with sugar and cream.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth pudding as it heats and cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the pudding and sets into a creamy body.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the topping a light, airy texture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the whipped egg whites and dissolves smoothly into them.

The step that matters

Stir the cornstarch mixture into the boiling milk. Cornstarch must be dispersed in cold liquid first and then added to hot milk while stirring; otherwise it clumps and the pudding turns lumpy instead of smooth and thickened.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar. 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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