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Dessert

Corn Starch Pudding

A milk and egg white pudding thickened with corn starch, served with a custard sauce flavored with lemon or vanilla.

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 ↓

Corn Starch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Heat the milk in a pan or small bucket in a kettle of hot water until boiling.

  2. Add the sugar, then add the corn starch dissolved in a little cold milk.

  3. Fold in the whipped egg whites until well combined.

  4. Cook for a few minutes.

  5. Pour into tea cups, filling them halfway.

  6. Set in a cool place.

Make the custard

  1. Bring 1 pint of milk to a boil.

  2. Add 3 tablespoons of sugar.

  3. Stir in the beaten yolks thinned with 1 tablespoon of milk until thickened.

  4. Flavor with 2 teaspoons of lemon or vanilla.

  5. Let cool.

Serve

  1. Place a pudding cup in a sauce dish.

  2. Pour the custard over it.

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 liquid base and provides moisture for the pudding.
Corn starch
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth, sliceable set as it cooks.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they add airiness and lightness to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the mild flavor of the milk.

The step that matters

Cooking the cornstarch mixture. Cornstarch only thickens once the liquid reaches a boil and the starch granules swell and gelatinize. Stopping early leaves the pudding thin and can leave a raw starchy taste, so keep it hot and stir for the full few minutes.

“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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