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Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, corn starch, sugar, eggs, and vanilla, baked and topped with a fluffy egg white mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

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. Mix corn starch with cold water.

  2. Stir the mixture into boiling milk.

  3. Combine 6 tablespoons sugar with egg yolks.

  4. Pour the mixture into the starch mixture.

Bake

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C).

Top and brown

  1. Beat egg whites with 6 tablespoons sugar and vanilla until fluffy.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the egg white mixture on the pudding.

  3. Brown slightly 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.

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, providing body and richness once heated.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard as it heats, giving it a smooth, sliceable set.
Egg yolks
Add thickening power and richness to the custard, helping it set softly.
Egg whites
Beaten into a foam, they form a light topping that sets and browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilise the beaten egg white foam.

The step that matters

Stir the starch mixture into boiling milk. Starch must be fully dispersed in the hot liquid and kept moving, or it clumps and the custard thickens unevenly instead of becoming 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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