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Dessert

Kiss Pudding

A milk-based pudding thickened with corn starch and egg yolks, topped with a frothy egg white frosting and grated coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,294 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Kiss 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. Combine ½ cup of milk, salt, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Heat the mixture until boiling.

  3. Dissolve corn starch in the remaining milk.

  4. Stir the dissolved corn starch into the boiling mixture.

  5. Add the egg yolks and vanilla extract, stirring continuously until thickened.

Make the frosting

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gradually add ½ cup sugar and lemon flavoring to the beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Spread the frosting over the pudding.

  2. Save a little frosting to moisten the top.

  3. Place the pudding in a 350°F (175°C) oven to brown.

  4. Garnish with grated coconut.

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. Vanilla + coconuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 milk mixture into a smooth, set custard.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the custard as it cooks.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the light frosting.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, dissolved into whipped whites, stabilizes the frosting.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornstarch into the boiling mixture. Cornstarch must be stirred constantly as it boils, or it clumps and the custard thickens unevenly. Egg yolks added to the hot mixture should also be stirred continuously until thickened, so they do not scramble.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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