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Maple Walnut Pudding

A pudding made with maple syrup, milk, walnuts, cornstarch, vanilla, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Maple Walnut Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a saucepan, combine maple syrup, milk, and salt. Heat over medium heat until warm.

  2. In a small bowl, mix cornstarch with a little cold milk to make a slurry.

  3. Add the cornstarch mixture to the warm milk mixture, stirring constantly until it thickens.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract and chopped walnuts.

Serve

  1. Pour into a serving dish and let cool before serving.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Walnut + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Maple syrup + vanillatop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together752 recipes

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

  4. Maple syrup + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Milk + walnuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, sliceable pudding as it heats.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that the cornstarch thickens.
Maple syrup
Provides the sweetness and the main maple flavour.
Chopped walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty contrast to the soft pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornstarch mixture into the warm milk. Cornstarch can clump if added without constant stirring. Stirring keeps it evenly dispersed so the pudding thickens smoothly as the starch gelatinises with heat.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (maple syrup, milk, vanilla):

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against maple syrup, milk, vanilla. 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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