Skip to main content
Dessert

Velvet Pudding

A custard-like dessert made from eggs, sugar, milk, cornstarch, and baked with a browned egg white topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Velvet Pudding

Why it works: Egg and milk 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 ↓

Velvet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Bring the milk to a boil in a saucepan.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and 1 cup of sugar.

  4. Dissolve the cornstarch in a little cold milk and add it to the mixture along with the salt.

  5. Boil until the mixture thickens, then remove from heat.

  6. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake.

  2. Spread the beaten egg whites on top.

  3. Sprinkle the remaining cup of sugar on the whites.

  4. Brown lightly in the oven.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + milktop 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).

Sugar and milk 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites form the light meringue topping.
White sugar
Sweetens the custard and, on top, sweetens and helps the meringue brown.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture as it boils, giving the custard its body.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard and provides moisture and richness.

The step that matters

Boil until the mixture thickens. Cornstarch only thickens fully when it reaches a boil, and the custard must be thick enough to hold up under the meringue. Stopping early leaves a thin, runny base.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes