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Dessert

Kiss Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, corn starch, eggs, and sugar, topped with beaten egg whites and baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Kiss Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Dissolve the corn starch in a small amount of cold milk.

  3. Add the corn starch mixture and egg yolks to the scalding milk, stirring well.

  4. Pour the mixture into a dish and let it cool.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add the sugar.

  2. Spread the beaten egg whites on top of the cooled mixture.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the base of the custard and supplies its liquid and creamy body.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture as it heats, giving the custard its set texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and add richness and body as they thicken it.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the topping and browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the meringue topping and helps it brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Stirring the starch into the scalding milk. Cornstarch must be dispersed in cold milk first and stirred well into the hot milk so it thickens evenly without lumps. Egg yolks added to very hot liquid can scramble, so the mixture should be stirred steadily while it thickens.

“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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