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Dessert

Cooperstown Pudding

A baked pudding made with flour, corn starch, milk, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cooperstown Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix flour and corn starch into a paste with cold milk.

  2. Add a small piece of butter to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Beat the eggs and stir them into the mixture once it has cooled slightly.

  2. Place the pudding dish in a pan of boiling water.

  3. Bake for 30 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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Set when heated, giving the pudding its firm, custard-like structure.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and gives the pudding body as it cooks.
Corn starch
Thickens the batter smoothly and helps it hold its shape when baked.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and moisture that the eggs and starches set into.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a softer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Stir in the eggs after the mixture cools slightly. Eggs begin to set when heated and can scramble if added to a very hot mixture. Letting the base cool a little first helps keep the pudding smooth and evenly set.

“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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