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Dessert

Fannie's Pudding

A custard pudding made with sweet milk, corn starch, eggs, and sugar, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Fannie's 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. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix corn starch, egg yolks, and ½ cup sugar.

  3. Add the corn starch mixture to the scalded milk and stir well.

  4. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until frothy and spread them over the top.

  2. Sprinkle with a little sugar and bake in a 350°F (175°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

Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the custard, adding richness and a smooth texture.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture so the custard sets smoothly rather than runny.
Egg whites
Beaten into a foam on top, they set and brown in the oven for a light crust.
Sweet milk
Forms the base of the custard, providing liquid and body for the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir the starch mixture into the scalded milk. Cornstarch needs heat and stirring to thicken evenly; adding it unevenly can leave lumps or a thin, uneven custard.

“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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