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Dessert

Sunday Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, eggs, cornstarch, sugar, and optional lemon flavor, topped with beaten egg whites and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sunday Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a pot.

  2. In a bowl, beat the cornstarch, egg yolks, and sugar together.

  3. Add the mixture to the boiling milk, stirring constantly.

  4. Continue to boil in a double boiler until thickened.

  5. Pour the mixture into a dish.

  6. Flavor with lemon or your choice of flavoring.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and mix in powdered sugar.

  2. Spread the egg white mixture over the pudding.

  3. Brown in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  4. Serve cold.

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 + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 that the cornstarch thickens into a pudding.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites whip into a stiff, browning topping.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk as it boils, giving the pudding its set texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the whipped whites hold their structure.

The step that matters

Add the mixture to the boiling milk, stirring constantly.. Cornstarch thickens only when heated and stirred, and without constant stirring it can clump or scorch on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar. 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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