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Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, corn starch, egg yolks, sugar, vanilla, and topped with a sweetened whipped egg white.

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

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. Stir in the corn starch that has been moistened.

  3. Let it boil for a few minutes.

  4. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar and vanilla extract in a bowl.

  5. Add the egg yolk mixture to the milk and corn starch mixture.

  6. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

  7. Bake the pudding.

Top and finish baking

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add sugar and lemon extract to the beaten egg whites.

  3. Spread the egg white mixture over the pudding once it is done.

  4. Return the pudding to the oven.

  5. Bake until it is a nice yellow.

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. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 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 pudding and sets into a creamy custard.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk as it boils, giving the pudding body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set with a rich texture.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam that forms the topping and bakes to a light crust.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilise the whipped egg white topping.

The step that matters

Boiling the moistened corn starch. Starch only thickens fully once it reaches a boil and is held there for a few minutes; stopping early leaves the custard thin and grainy-textured.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, corn, egg, sugar, vanilla):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, corn, egg, sugar, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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