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Dessert

Feather Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with milk, corn starch, egg whites, and a sweetened custard topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Feather Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a saucepan, bring 1 quart of milk to a boil.

  2. Mix 3 tablespoons of corn starch with a little cold milk, then add to the boiling milk.

  3. Stir until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat and fold in 4 beaten egg whites and a pinch of salt.

  5. Pour the mixture into a mold.

Make the custard and serve

  1. For the custard, combine the yolks of the eggs with 1 pint of milk and sweeten to taste.

  2. Pour the custard over the pudding after unmolding.

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

Corn starch
Thickens the hot milk into a set, sliceable base for the pudding.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they lighten the pudding and give it its airy structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of both the pudding and the custard.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard, adding richness and smooth body.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten whites trap air that gives the pudding its lightness. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air from collapsing, so the pudding stays feather-light.

“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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