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Dessert

Cherry Cornstarch Pudding

A chilled cherry pudding made with milk, sugar, lemon rind, cornstarch, cherries, vanilla, and whipped cream.

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

Cherry Cornstarch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a double boiler, heat 2 cups of milk with 4 tablespoons of sugar and the grated rind of 1 lemon until near boiling.

  2. Stir in ½ cup of cornstarch moistened with ¼ cup of cold milk and cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and add ½ cup of chopped ripe cherries, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, and 1 cup of whipped cream.

Chill and serve

  1. Pour into a wet mold and refrigerate until cold.

  2. Turn out and serve decorated with ripe, stoned cherries and sweetened whipped 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.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 as it cooks, giving the pudding its set body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornstarch thickens into a custard.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture to the set pudding.
Cherries
Contribute fruit flavor and moisture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir in the cornstarch mixture and cook for 5 minutes. Cornstarch must be fully mixed in and heated so its starch granules swell and thicken the milk. Undercooked starch leaves a thin, starchy-tasting pudding that will not set properly when chilled.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, vanilla, cream. 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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