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Dessert

Mock Cream Pudding

A dessert made from milk, cornstarch, sugar, egg whites, and custard, folded together and set in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,800 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mock Cream Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Heat 1 quart of milk in a saucepan.

  2. Mix 3 tablespoons cornstarch with ½ cup sugar and wet with a little cold milk.

  3. Stir the mixture into the boiling milk and let it cook slowly for 15 minutes.

  4. Flavor with vanilla.

  5. Beat the whites of 4 eggs until stiff and gently fold them into the hot mixture.

  6. Remove from heat and pour into a buttered mold.

  7. Set aside to cool and harden.

Make the custard

  1. Combine the egg yolks, 3 large tablespoons sugar, a little salt, and 3 cups milk in a saucepan.

  2. Cook until thickened, being careful not to curdle.

  3. Flavor with ½ teaspoon almond or vanilla essence.

  4. Let it cool.

Serve

  1. Turn the cream into a shallow dish and pour the custard around it.

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 + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  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. Sugar + eggtop 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a sliceable cream as it cooks and gelatinises.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they lighten the cream and help it set with structure.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they cook and add richness to its smooth texture.
Milk
Forms the base of both the cream and the custard, providing moisture and body.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and custard and softens the set texture of the cornstarch.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until thickened. Egg yolks can curdle if overheated, turning the custard grainy. Cook gently and stop as soon as it thickens.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Cocoafits about as well
  4. Walnutfits about as well

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