Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓
Vincent Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the custard
Boil 1½ cups of sweet milk.
In a bowl, mix 3 tablespoons of corn starch and 4 tablespoons of flour with a little cold milk, the yolks of 3 eggs, and ¼ teaspoon of salt.
Cook the mixture together until thick, then set aside to cool.
Top and brown
In another bowl, beat the whites of 4 eggs until stiff, then gradually add 1 cup of sugar and flavor to taste.
Spread the egg white mixture on top of the pudding and brown it under a broiler.
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.
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Milk + corntop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,165 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
- Corn starch
- Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable custard as it cooks.
- All-purpose flour
- Adds additional thickening to help the custard set firm.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich and thicken the custard, adding richness and a smooth texture.
- Egg whites
- Whipped to stiff peaks to form the airy meringue topping that browns.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the meringue and helps it brown under the broiler.
The step that matters
Beating the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be beaten to stiff peaks to hold air and form a stable meringue. Underbeaten whites collapse and weep, and sugar added too early or too fast can make them lose volume.
“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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