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Dessert

Delicate Pudding

A light pudding made with cornstarch, egg whites, sugar, and vanilla, served with boiled custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Delicate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cornstarch base

  1. Mix cornstarch with cold water.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture.

  3. Cook for 15 minutes.

Combine and set

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add sugar to egg whites and beat together.

  3. Pour hot cornstarch mixture over the egg and sugar.

  4. Beat until smooth.

  5. Add vanilla and mix well.

  6. Dip a mold in water.

  7. Fill the mold with the pudding.

  8. Set the mold on ice.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled custard made from the egg yolks.

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

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

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 liquid into a smooth, sliceable pudding as it cooks.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they lighten the pudding and give it a delicate texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.
Egg yolks
Enrich the boiled custard served alongside the pudding.

The step that matters

Pour hot cornstarch mixture over the egg and sugar. Adding the hot starch mixture while beating keeps the whipped whites from deflating and helps the pudding set evenly. Beating until smooth prevents lumps of cooked starch.

“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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