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Dessert

Corn Starch Pudding

A sweet pudding made with corn starch, milk, eggs, and optional chocolate, served with a milk-based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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. In a double boiler, combine sweet milk, corn starch, and a little salt, and heat until boiling.

  2. Beat the whites of 3 eggs to stiff peaks and fold into the mixture.

  3. For chocolate pudding, remove ½ of the mixture and stir in melted chocolate, 2 tablespoons milk, and 2 tablespoons sugar.

  4. Layer the white and chocolate mixtures in a mold and cool.

  5. Pour into molds and let cool.

Make the sauce

  1. To make the sauce, combine boiling milk, beaten egg yolks, sugar, and 1 tablespoon milk in a bowl.

  2. Stir over steam until thickened and add vanilla.

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. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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 set pudding as it heats and cools.
Whites of 3 eggs
Beaten to stiff peaks, they lighten the pudding and give it an airy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they heat and add richness.
Chocolate
Flavors the darker layer of the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce over steam until thickened. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but if they get too hot they can curdle and turn grainy. Gentle heat over steam, with steady stirring, keeps the sauce smooth.

“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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