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Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A custard pudding made with scalded milk, corn starch, eggs, sugar, lemon, and baked with a meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

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.

Make the custard

  1. Moisten the corn starch with a little cold milk.

  2. Stir the moistened corn starch into the boiling scalded milk.

  3. Add the beaten yolks of 5 eggs and 4 tablespoons of sugar; stir well.

  4. Remove from heat and add flavoring as desired.

  5. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites with the lemon juice and 1 heaping tablespoon of sugar until stiff.

  2. Spread the egg white mixture over the pudding.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned, about 6 to 12 minutes.

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. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Corn starch
Thickens the scalded milk into a smooth, sliceable custard as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich and set the custard, adding richness and body.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they form a light topping that browns in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet custard and helps stabilise the whipped whites.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, providing moisture and body.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Whites under-beaten or deflated will weep or sink into the custard instead of holding a light, browned peak. Beating them with lemon juice and sugar helps them hold their structure until baking sets them.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, corn, 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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