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Dessert

Boiled Corn Starch Pudding

A pudding made by boiling milk with sugar, thickening with corn starch, and adding egg yolks, butter, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Boiled Corn Starch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the milk with the sugar.

  2. Mix the corn starch with a little cold milk.

  3. Thin the mixture with some hot milk from the kettle.

  4. Quickly pour the starch mixture into the boiling milk and stir for 2 minutes until thickened.

  5. Beat the yolks with a spoonful of milk.

  6. Remove the kettle from heat.

  7. Stir in the yolks; the heat will cook them.

  8. Add the butter and flavoring.

Serve

  1. Turn the pudding into a lightly buttered pan and keep warm until serving.

  2. Serve with lemon syrup sauce or hot cream.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  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 smooth, set custard as it heats and swells.
Egg yolks
Enrich the pudding and add richness and body when stirred in off the heat.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and flavor.

The step that matters

Stir in the yolks off the heat. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if added to boiling liquid. Removing the kettle from heat first lets the residual heat gently cook the yolks into the thickened starch without graininess.

“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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