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Dessert

Corn Meal Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, cornmeal, butter, sugar, salt, eggs, and optional raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Corn Meal Pudding

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 ↓

Corn Meal Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard base

  1. In a saucepan, combine ½ of the milk with the corn meal and heat, stirring constantly until scalded.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the butter, sugar, and salt while still warm.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the remaining milk with the beaten eggs.

  4. Combine the two mixtures and pour into a baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 3 hours.

  2. Add raisins if desired for extra flavor.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Corn + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn meal
Thickens the milk as it scalds and gives the pudding its body and grainy texture.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding into a soft, sliceable custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the corn meal thickens and the eggs set.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Scalding the corn meal mixture. Stirring constantly while heating keeps the corn meal from settling and scorching on the pan bottom, and it lets the starch thicken evenly before the mixture is combined with the eggs.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, corn, butter, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

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