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Dessert

Kiss Pudding

A custard pudding with a meringue topping baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Kiss Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, bring the milk to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and 1 cup of sugar together, then mix the corn starch with the egg yolks.

  3. Pour the egg mixture into the boiling milk, stirring constantly until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat and add vanilla extract.

  5. Pour the mixture into a pudding pan.

Top and bake

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gradually add 1 cup of sugar.

  2. Spread the beaten egg whites over the pudding and bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until browned.

  3. Serve warm.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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 the custard while whites whip into a meringue topping that browns.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and stabilizes the beaten egg whites in the meringue.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the pudding that the yolks and starch thicken.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard as it heats with the milk.

The step that matters

Pouring the egg mixture into the boiling milk while stirring constantly. Stirring keeps the egg yolks from scrambling on contact with hot milk, while the starch and yolks thicken the custard evenly into a smooth pudding.

“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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