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 Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the batter
Grate the corn from the cob.
Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.
Combine the corn and egg yolks.
Stir in the melted butter.
Gradually add the milk while beating continuously.
Mix in the sugar and salt.
Fold in the beaten egg whites.
Bake and brown
Pour the mixture into a baking dish.
Cover it.
Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour.
Remove the cover.
Increase the temperature to brown.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Milk + corntop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Butter + corntop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Eggs
- Yolks enrich and bind the custard, while beaten whites lighten it and help it set.
- Milk
- Provides the liquid that turns the corn and eggs into a soft, custardy pudding.
- Corn
- Supplies the main body, sweetness and flavour of the pudding.
- Melted butter
- Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.
The step that matters
Gradually add the milk while beating continuously. Adding milk slowly while beating keeps the egg yolks evenly dispersed, so the custard blends smoothly instead of forming lumps before baking.
“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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