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Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, cornstarch, egg yolks, sugar, baked and topped with jelly or jam and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Delmonico Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Mix the cornstarch with cold milk to form a paste.

  3. Stir the paste into the scalded milk along with the salt.

  4. Cook for 15 minutes, stirring constantly until smooth.

  5. Add the beaten egg yolks and sugar.

  6. Cook for an additional 5 minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

  2. Bake for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove from the oven.

  4. Cover with a layer of jelly or jam.

  5. Top with meringue.

  6. Return to the oven.

  7. Brown slowly.

  8. Serve hot or cold, with or without whipped cream.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that gives the pudding its body and richness.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth custard as it heats.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the custard once cooked.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until smooth. Cornstarch thickens only when the mixture is cooked through, and constant stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the base. Egg yolks can curdle if the custard overheats, so they should be cooked gently after being added.

“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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