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Dessert

Canadian Pudding

A steamed pudding made with corn flour, milk, lemon rind, eggs, sugar, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Canadian Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, mix corn flour, milk, and lemon rind.

  2. Boil while stirring continuously.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Add beaten eggs and sugar and mix well.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour into a well-buttered mold lined with raisins.

  2. Steam for 2 hours.

  3. Serve with wine sauce.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Indian corn flour
Thickens the milk into a set, pudding-like body as it boils and cools.
Eggs
Add structure and help the pudding set firm when steamed.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the corn flour thickens.

The step that matters

Boil while stirring continuously. Corn flour can scorch on the bottom of the pan or form lumps if left unstirred. Constant stirring keeps the starch dispersed so the mixture thickens evenly before cooling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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