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Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, corn starch, egg yolks, sugar, vanilla, and topped with a sweet meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Delmonico 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. Heat the milk in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. Stir in the moistened corn starch.

  3. Let the mixture boil for a few minutes.

  4. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar and vanilla extract in a bowl.

  5. Add the egg mixture to the milk and corn starch.

  6. Pour the combined mixture into a pudding dish.

  7. Bake the pudding in a 350°F (175°C) oven until set.

Top and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and lemon extract to the beaten whites.

  3. Spread the egg white mixture over the set pudding.

  4. Return the pudding to the oven.

  5. Bake until the top is a nice yellow.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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 that thickens as it cooks.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk as it boils, giving the pudding its body and set.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set with a smooth, rich texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff meringue that forms the topping and browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and the meringue, and helps the meringue hold its structure.

The step that matters

Let the mixture boil for a few minutes. Corn starch only thickens fully once it reaches a boil, and boiling long enough gives the custard its set. Undercooked starch leaves the pudding thin and runny.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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