Skip to main content
Dessert

Corn-starch Pudding

A sweet pudding made from corn starch, milk, sugar, and egg, cooked in a boiled cup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Corn-starch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil a saucepan half full of water.

  2. In another saucepan, mix 2 teaspoons of corn starch with ½ cup of milk until smooth.

  3. Add 6 lumps of sugar and heat, stirring until it boils (about 10 minutes).

  4. Remove from heat and beat in 1 egg until well mixed.

Steam and serve

  1. Grease a cup with butter.

  2. Pour the mixture into the greased cup.

  3. Wring a small cloth in boiling water, flour it, and tie it over the cup with string.

  4. When the water is boiling, place the cup in the saucepan and boil for 25 minutes.

  5. Remove the cloth and serve the pudding as desired.

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

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a set, smooth custard as it heats.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the pudding as it sets.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the corn starch thickens.

The step that matters

Heating the corn starch mixture. Corn starch only thickens fully once it reaches a boil, and stirring keeps it smooth and prevents lumps or scorching on the base of the pan.

“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.

More corn starch pudding recipes

Chocolate 3 See all 77 →

You might also like

Corn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesCorn CakesCorn Cakes22 recipesGreen Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding14 recipes