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Dessert

Oswego Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with milk, eggs, cornstarch, sugar, vanilla, topped with currant jelly and whipped egg whites.

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 ↓

Oswego Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and mix with a little milk and cornstarch.

  2. Sweeten and flavor with vanilla.

  3. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  4. Add the egg yolk mixture to the scalded milk and boil for 3 minutes.

  5. Pour the mixture into a dish and let it cool.

Top and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread currant jelly over the cooled pudding and top with the beaten egg whites.

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. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  5. Vanilla + curranttop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Vanilla and sugar 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, which thickens when heated.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture into a set, smooth pudding as it boils.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the custard as it cooks.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stable, airy meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the meringue and stabilises the beaten egg whites.

The step that matters

Boiling the egg yolk and milk mixture. Cornstarch only thickens fully when it reaches a boil, and the egg yolks need to be cooked through. Stirring while it heats prevents lumps and scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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