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Dessert

Frozen Pudding

A chilled custard dessert made with eggs, milk, sugar, cornstarch, cherries, pineapple, walnuts, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and pineapple work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 885 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Frozen Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the milk and sugar.

Make the custard

  1. Add the dissolved cornstarch to the milk mixture and heat until it thickens to a thin custard.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then stir in the cherries, pineapple, walnuts, and flavoring.

Freeze

  1. Place the mixture in a pail surrounded by ice and salt for 4 to 5 hours.

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 + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together885 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Pineapple + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Milk + walnuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Egg + milktop 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and gives it creamy body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the frozen texture softer.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture into a custard as it heats.
Crystallized cherries
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness.
Pineapple
Adds juicy fruit flavour and a little acidity.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty contrast to the smooth base.

The step that matters

Heating the cornstarch custard until it thickens. Cornstarch only thickens fully once heated, and it can scorch on the bottom of the pan if left unstirred. Stop heating once it coats a spoon, so the custard stays smooth and sets properly as it freezes.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, sugar, pineapple):

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, sugar, pineapple. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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