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Dessert

Corn Starch Pudding

A custard-like pudding made from milk, corn starch, eggs, and sugar, topped with a butter and sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Corn Starch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix the corn starch with a little milk to dissolve.

  3. Add the beaten eggs, sugar, and dissolved corn starch to the boiling milk.

  4. Stir in a little salt.

  5. Flavor with vanilla.

  6. Cook until thickened.

  7. Pour into a serving dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Mix in the sugar.

  3. Season the sauce with nutmeg.

  4. Serve the pudding 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Vanilla + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set custard as it cooks.
Eggs
Add richness and help set the pudding as it thickens.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch and eggs thicken.
Butter
Adds fat and a creamy texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook until thickened. Cornstarch thickens only when the mixture reaches a boil and is stirred, so stopping early leaves a thin pudding. Eggs can curdle if overheated, so keep the heat controlled while stirring.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

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