Skip to main content
Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A baked custard pudding made with egg yolks, milk, corn starch, topped with jelly and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Delmonico 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks, sweetened milk, and corn starch.

  2. Bake the mixture for 10 minutes.

Top and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add 1 tablespoon of powdered sugar to each egg white.

  3. Spread jelly over the baked pudding.

  4. Top with the beaten egg whites.

  5. Return the pudding to the oven.

  6. Bake until the top is light brown.

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. Egg + milktop 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 the custard and add richness and colour to the pudding base.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving it moisture and a soft set.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk and yolk mixture as it heats, giving the custard body.
Egg whites
Whipped to form a foam that bakes into a light, browned meringue topping.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps the whipped whites hold their shape.
Jelly
Adds a sweet, fruity layer between the custard and the meringue.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Whites must be whipped to a stable foam with sugar added gradually; under-whipped or deflated whites will weep and fail to hold the topping.

“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.

You might also like

Corn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesCorn CakesCorn Cakes22 recipesGreen Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding14 recipes