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Dessert

Saratoga Pudding

A corn starch pudding served with a sweet wine and butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Saratoga 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.

Bake the pudding

  1. Mix corn starch in cold milk.

  2. Stir until it boils.

  3. When cool, stir in white sugar and beaten egg whites and yolks.

  4. Pour mixture into a large pudding dish.

  5. Place the dish in a pan of water.

  6. Bake for 1.5 hours at 350°F (175°C).

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, cream together sugar and butter.

  2. Add egg yolks and half the wine.

  3. Place the dish in boiling water.

  4. Stir for 10 minutes.

  5. Add the rest of the wine.

  6. Serve.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the hot milk into a set, smooth custard body.
Eggs
Set on heating to give the pudding structure, and add richness to the custard and sauce.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the starch thickens and the eggs set into a custard.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture in the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce over boiling water. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but curdle if they get too hot. Keeping the dish in boiling water and stirring steadily spreads the heat evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly.

“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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