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Dessert

Corn Starch Pudding

A sweet pudding made from milk, eggs, corn starch, and sugar, served with boiled custard or chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Sterrett, Laura C · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Tea and lemon work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 610 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Corn Starch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Add 1 pint sweet milk and the whites of three eggs.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons corn starch, 3 tablespoons sugar, and a little salt.

  3. Place the milk in a pan or small bucket set in a kettle of hot water on the stove.

  4. When the milk reaches boiling, add the sugar.

  5. Add the corn starch dissolved in a little cold milk.

  6. Add the whipped egg whites.

  7. Beat the mixture and let it cook a few minutes.

  8. Pour into tea cups filling about half full, set in a cool place.

Make the boiled custard sauce

  1. For sauce, make boiled custard: bring 1 pint milk to boiling, add 3 tablespoons sugar, then add beaten yolks thinned by one tablespoon milk, stirring until thickened; flavor with two teaspoons lemon or vanilla, set to cool.

  2. Serve by placing a mold in a sauce dish and pouring some boiled custard over it; alternatively, make the pudding in one large mold.

Make the chocolate and other variations

  1. To make chocolate pudding, flavor the white pudding with vanilla, remove two-thirds, add half a cake of softened chocolate dissolved in a little milk, layer half the white pudding, then chocolate, then the rest of the white; alternatively, use two kvyers of chocolate with a white layer between, or center with cocoa, or pineapple, or strawberries.

  2. Stir together half pint cream, 1.5 ounces sugar, yolks of three eggs, and a little grated nutmeg; add well-beaten whites, stir lightly; pour into a pie plate sprinkled with stale bread crumbs to about crust thickness; sprinkle top with bread crumbs and bake.

  3. Boil for two and a half hours in a two-quart pail set in boiling water, or steam for the same time. For sauce, take one cup white sugar, butter the size of an egg, grated lemon rind, and white of an egg.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

961Calories
30 gProtein
30 gFat
142 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 8 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Chocolate1 oz (28g) semisweet155
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Sterrett, Laura C. 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. See the original page.

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. Tea + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Milk + teatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Corn + teatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together89 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites set and lighten the pudding, while yolks thicken the custard sauce.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the pudding a firm, sliceable body.
Milk
Forms the base of the pudding and the custard sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and custard and softens their set.

The step that matters

Dissolve the corn starch in cold milk before adding it. Starch added directly to hot milk clumps and won't thicken evenly. Dissolving it in cold liquid first lets the granules disperse so they gelatinize smoothly when heated.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, egg, corn, sugar, tea, chocolate. 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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