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Dessert

Florentine Pudding

A custard made with milk, corn starch, eggs, sugar and flavored with vanilla or lemon, topped with meringue.

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 ↓

Florentine Pudding

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 custard

  1. In a pan, bring 1 quart of milk to a boil.

  2. Mix 3 tablespoons of corn-starch with a little cold milk until smooth.

  3. Beat the yolks of 3 eggs and add to the corn-starch mixture along with ½ cup sugar and your choice of flavoring.

  4. Stir this mixture into the boiling milk and continue stirring until it thickens.

  5. Pour the mixture into a serving dish.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add 1 cup of powdered sugar and spread over the top.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for a few minutes until the frosting is golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream or enjoy it plain.

  2. For a variation, bake in cups.

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. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, setting as it thickens with the starch.
Corn-starch
Thickens the boiling milk into a smooth, sliceable custard.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the custard set and thicken smoothly.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and contributes to its soft texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the light topping.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the meringue topping and helps it brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Stirring the starch into the boiling milk. Starch must be fully dispersed and stirred constantly as it heats, or it clumps. Continued stirring until thickened lets the starch granules swell evenly into a smooth custard.

“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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