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Dessert

French Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, corn starch, eggs, sugar, vanilla, topped with frosted egg whites and coconut garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,294 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

French Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Combine part of the milk, salt, and sugar in a pot.

  2. Heat until boiling.

  3. Dissolve the corn starch in the remaining milk.

  4. Stir into the boiling mixture.

  5. Add the egg yolks while stirring.

  6. Flavor with vanilla.

Make the frosting

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add ½ cup sugar.

  3. Flavor with lemon.

Frost and bake

  1. Spread the frosting on the pudding.

  2. Place it in the oven to brown.

  3. Reserve some frosting to moisten the top.

  4. Garnish with grated coconut.

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. Vanilla + coconuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,294 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Corn + coconuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch and egg yolks thicken.
Corn starch
Swells in the hot milk to thicken the custard.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the custard as it heats.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam that gives the frosting its airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the whipped whites stay stable.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolks while stirring. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet very hot liquid all at once. Stirring constantly while adding them spreads the heat evenly so the custard thickens smoothly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, corn, egg, sugar, vanilla, coconut):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, corn, egg, sugar, vanilla, coconut. 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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