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Dessert

Gold and Silver Pudding

A milk-based pudding flavored with sherry, sweetened with sugar, thickened with corn starch, topped with an egg‑white frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Gold and Silver Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the pudding

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add sugar and dissolved corn starch to the milk.

  3. Stir in the sherry wine.

  4. Bake the mixture in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

  5. Let it cool completely.

Frost and brown

  1. Prepare the frosting by beating the egg whites and mixing in powdered sugar and flavoring.

  2. Spread the frosting over the cooled pudding.

  3. Brown the frosting in the oven for a few minutes.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (fenugreek, curry).

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 liquid base of the pudding and carries the sweetness and body of the custard.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture so the pudding sets with a smooth, sliceable texture.
Eggs
Egg whites whip into a foam that gives the frosting its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps tenderize the pudding's texture.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the whipped whites, sweetening and stabilizing the frosting.

The step that matters

Brown the frosting in the oven for a few minutes. Browning relies on sugars caramelizing and proteins reacting at high heat, so a few minutes too long can scorch the frosting while a few too short leaves it pale and unset.

“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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