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Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A baked custard pudding made with sweet milk, sugar, egg yolks, corn starch, and beaten egg whites.

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

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 sweet milk in a pan.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in the milk.

  3. Add the yolks of the eggs and corn starch dissolved in a little milk.

  4. Stir until thickened.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites with 1 tablespoon of sugar until stiff.

  2. Spread the egg whites over the pudding.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until lightly browned.

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

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the custard, adding richness and body to the pudding.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a set custard as it heats.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stiff topping that bakes to a light browned crust.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the whipped whites hold their stiff structure.

The step that matters

Stir until thickened. Cornstarch must be heated while stirring so its starch granules swell and gelatinize; stopping too early leaves a thin pudding, while overheating can scramble the egg yolks.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, egg, corn):

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

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