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Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A custard pudding topped with meringue, baked in the oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Delmonico Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Bring the milk to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. Mix the corn starch with a little cold water.

  3. Stir the corn starch mixture into the boiling milk.

  4. In a bowl, mix 6 tablespoons of sugar with the yolks of 5 eggs.

  5. Pour the egg yolk mixture into the corn starch mixture.

Bake and top with meringue

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding dish and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  2. Beat the egg whites with 6 tablespoons of sugar until stiff peaks form, then add vanilla extract.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of the meringue on top of the pudding.

  4. Brown the meringue slightly in the oven.

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

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

  3. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set with the milk.
Corn starch
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth, sliceable custard base.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stable, airy meringue topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, setting as it bakes.
White sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilize the whipped egg white meringue.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk mixture to the hot starch mixture. If the yolks are poured into very hot liquid too quickly, they can scramble. Adding them gradually, with stirring, keeps the custard smooth.

“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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