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Dessert

Corn Starch Pudding

A simple pudding made by thickening milk with corn starch and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk 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 ↓

Corn Starch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a saucepan, mix corn starch and sugar.

  2. Gradually add milk while stirring to avoid lumps.

  3. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened.

Serve

  1. Pour into a serving dish and let cool before serving.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 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

Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set pudding as it gelatinizes with heat.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the flavor of the starch.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into the pudding.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened. Starch granules swell and thicken only when heated, and they settle and scorch on the pan bottom if not stirred. Constant stirring keeps heat even and prevents lumps and burnt flavor.

“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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