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Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, corn starch, eggs, sugar, and lemon, topped with a stiffened egg white mixture and baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 corn starch with a little cold milk.

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

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and sugar, and mix 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 lemon juice and sugar until stiff.

  2. Spread the egg white mixture over the pudding.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned, about 5 to 10 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

Milk
Forms the base of the custard and carries the sweet, creamy body of the pudding.
Corn starch
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth custard as its starch granules swell with heat.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the custard, adding richness and a smooth set.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the topping and browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the meringue topping stay stiff and brown.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps stabilize the beaten egg whites.

The step that matters

Stiffly beaten egg whites. Whites must be beaten until stiff so the topping holds its shape and bakes into a light, browned layer. Under-beaten whites will weep or slump into the custard.

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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