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Dessert

Dandy Pudding

A custard pudding topped with meringue, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Dandy Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in water.

  2. Mix cornstarch with egg yolks and Dutch sugar.

  3. Pour the mixture into the boiling milk and stir quickly.

  4. Remove from heat immediately.

  5. Flavor the pudding as desired.

Make the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add ½ cup sugar to the beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Spread the meringue over the pudding when cool.

  2. Place the pudding in the oven to brown.

  3. Serve cold.

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

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

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

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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 body of the pudding and sets with the cornstarch into a creamy custard.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the pudding its body and set.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the custard as they are gently heated.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam with sugar to form the light meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Dutch sugar
Sweetens the custard base and adds flavor.

The step that matters

Remove from heat immediately. Cornstarch thickens as it heats but can turn thin or lumpy if overcooked, and egg yolks can curdle or scramble if held at high heat too long. Pulling the custard off the heat as soon as it thickens keeps it smooth.

“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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