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Dessert

Corn Starch

A custard-like pudding made with milk, corn starch, eggs, sugar, flavoring, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Corn Starch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Heat 1 pint of milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in 1 heaping tablespoon of corn starch.

  3. Boil in a double boiler until well cooked.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg whites.

  5. Pour the mixture into a mold.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, heat ½ pint of milk.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and stir them into the hot milk.

  3. Add sugar, flavoring, and a little cream to 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

Corn starch
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its set body.
Egg whites
Stirred into the hot mixture to add structure and lightness to the pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and help it thicken as it heats, adding richness.

The step that matters

Boil in a double boiler until well cooked. Corn starch only thickens fully once it has been heated long enough for its granules to swell and gelatinize. Undercooked starch leaves a thin, raw-tasting pudding. Gentle double-boiler heat also lowers the risk of scorching the milk.

“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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