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Dessert

Corn-starch Hasty Pudding

A simple pudding made by thickening scalded milk with corn starch, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Corn-starch Hasty Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the corn-starch with a little cold water to form a smooth liquid.

  3. Stir the corn-starch mixture into the scalded milk.

  4. Boil steadily for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

  5. Add salt and butter, then remove from heat.

Finish and serve

  1. Let the pudding stand in hot water for 3 minutes.

  2. Turn out into a deep, open dish.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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 heats and boils.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into a creamy custard.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished pudding.

The step that matters

Boil steadily for 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Cornstarch only thickens fully once it reaches a boil and its granules swell and gelatinize. Stirring prevents scorching on the pan bottom and lumps forming, and the starch needs sustained heat to set properly.

“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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