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Polenta Pudding

A sweet cornmeal pudding flavored with almond and served with a fruit sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 672 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Polenta Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine milk and cornmeal in a pot.

  2. Cook until thick enough to mold.

  3. Mix beaten eggs, salt, sugar, and almond flavoring in a bowl.

  4. Stir the mixture into the cornmeal.

  5. Pour into a mold and let cool.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Thicken fruit juice with cornstarch until it reaches a cream-like consistency.

  2. Add salt to taste.

  3. Serve the pudding cold with the sauce.

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. Almond + cherrytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together672 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Milk + cherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the thick body of the pudding as it cooks and sets.
Eggs
Bind the pudding and help it set firm when cooled.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks with the cornmeal into a soft, creamy base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the mild corn flavor.
Cornstarch
Thickens the fruit juice into a smooth, cream-like sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the cornmeal until thick enough to mold. Cornmeal must be cooked long enough for its starch to gelatinize fully; undercooked cornmeal stays grainy and will not set firmly when cooled in the mold.

Swap the cherry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Cherrythe original

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