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Dessert

Feather Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with milk, corn starch, egg whites, and egg yolks, sweetened with powdered sugar and strawberry jam.

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 ↓

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, then fold in the beaten egg whites and a pinch of salt.

  4. Pour the mixture into a mold and set aside.

Make the custard and serve

  1. In another bowl, whisk the egg yolks with 1 pint of milk and sweeten with powdered sugar.

  2. Pour the custard over the pudding after it has set in the mold.

  3. Serve chilled.

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 + strawberry jamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together144 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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 pudding structure.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in, they add lightness and an airy, delicate texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard with richness and help it set smoothly.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of both the pudding and the custard.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the custard.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when beaten to stiff peaks and folded gently; stirring vigorously or folding into a mixture that is too hot can deflate them, leaving a dense pudding instead of a light, feathery one.

Swap the strawberry jam

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Strawberry jamthe 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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