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Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, corn starch, eggs, sugar, and vanilla, topped with a sweet icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Delmonico Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix the corn starch with a little cold milk.

  2. Stir the mixture into the quart of milk just before it reaches boiling point.

  3. Boil for 3 minutes.

  4. Separate the yolks and whites of the eggs.

  5. Beat the yolks with 6 tablespoons of fine sugar.

  6. Mix the hot corn starch with the egg yolks and sugar, then flavor with vanilla.

Make the icing and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth, then add 3 tablespoons of sugar and flavor with vanilla.

  2. Pour the custard into a deep dish.

  3. Pipe the icing on top in the form of kisses.

  4. Bake until light brown.

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 and whites, beaten to a froth, form the light topping.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a custard as it heats and gelatinizes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that sets when cooked.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilize the beaten egg whites.

The step that matters

Stir the corn starch into the milk just before boiling. Corn starch must be added to hot liquid and kept heated long enough to thicken fully. Adding it too early can scorch the milk, and stopping before the mixture thickens leaves the custard runny.

“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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