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Dessert

Corn Starch Pudding

A chilled pudding made from milk, corn starch, sugar, coconut, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Corn Starch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sugar and corn starch to the boiling milk.

  3. Stir until the mixture thickens.

Set and serve

  1. Gently fold in the grated coconut and beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour into a mold and refrigerate until cold.

  3. Serve with 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. Corn + coconuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Milk + eggtop 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

Corn starch
Swells in hot milk and thickens the mixture into a smooth, sliceable pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens.
Egg whites
Whisked whites trap air and set into a light, delicate structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances its thickened richness.
Grated coconut
Adds flavor and a slightly chewy texture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture thickens. Corn starch granules swell and gelatinize as the milk heats. Constant stirring keeps the starch dispersed, preventing lumps and scorching on the pan bottom, and the mixture must reach a full simmer for the starch to thicken properly.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Peachfits less well

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