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Dessert

Florentine Pudding

A custard made from milk, corn starch, eggs, and sugar, topped with stiffened egg whites and butter, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Florentine 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. Bring 1 quart of milk to a boil in a pan.

  2. Mix 3 tablespoons of corn starch with a little cold milk until smooth.

  3. Beat the yolks of 3 eggs with ½ teacup of sugar and flavor with vanilla or lemon.

  4. Stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk. Stir until thickened.

  5. Pour the mixture into a serving dish.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites with ½ teacup of pulverized sugar until stiff.

  2. Spread the beaten egg whites over the custard.

  3. Dot with 1 tablespoon of butter.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden, about 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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the pudding and sets with the starch and egg yolks.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth custard as it heats.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the custard; whites are beaten into a stiff meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the beaten egg whites hold their stiff structure.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk. Adding the yolks to very hot milk can scramble them, so stirring steadily while pouring keeps the custard smooth as the starch thickens it.

“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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