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Dessert

Corn-Starch Pudding

A baked pudding made from corn starch, milk, sugar, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Corn-Starch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix 4 tablespoons of corn-starch with 1 tablespoon of cold milk until smooth.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the remaining milk, 3 tablespoons of powdered sugar, and the cinnamon or bay leaf.

  3. Heat the saucepan over medium heat until the milk boils.

  4. Once boiling, pour the milk mixture over the corn-starch mixture, stirring continuously until smooth.

  5. Beat 2 eggs lightly and add them to the corn-starch mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a quart pie dish with butter.

  2. Pour the mixture into the pie dish and grate ½ teaspoon of nutmeg over the top.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400 °F (200 °C) for 30 minutes.

  4. Serve warm.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Corn + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Corn-starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set pudding as it cooks and cools.
Eggs
Add richness and help the pudding set firm when baked.
Milk
Forms the base of the pudding, providing moisture and body.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the pudding and dissolves easily into the warm milk.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling milk into the corn-starch mixture while stirring. Starch only thickens fully when heated, and adding hot milk all at once to the starch paste while stirring keeps it smooth. Stopping the stirring can leave lumps or uneven thickening.

“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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