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Dessert

Corn-flour Souffle Pudding

A sweet, airy pudding made from corn flour, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, and vanilla, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Corn-flour Souffle Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, mix corn flour and powdered sugar with milk.

  2. Add butter, salt, and vanilla essence, then stir briskly until it boils.

  3. Vigorously work in the beaten yolks of the eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Whisk the egg whites to a firm froth and gently fold them into the batter.

  2. Pour the mixture into a lightly buttered pie dish.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 30 minutes.

  4. Sprinkle the top with powdered sugar and serve hot.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken and enrich the batter, while whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Corn flour
Starch thickens the milk mixture as it boils, giving the pudding its body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a soft, tender texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the starch thickens into a custard.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds a fine, delicate sweetness to the top.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites whipped to a firm froth trap air that gives the pudding its lift. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates the foam and leaves a dense, flat result.

“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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