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Dessert

Dandy Pudding

A milk-based pudding thickened with corn starch, eggs, and sugar, baked and topped with beaten egg whites flavored with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Dandy Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a pot of water.

  2. In a bowl, mix corn starch with egg yolks and ½ cup sugar.

  3. Pour the mixture into the boiling milk and stir quickly.

  4. Remove from heat immediately.

Top and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites with the remaining ½ cup sugar until stiff.

  2. Spread the beaten egg whites over the pudding when cool.

  3. Place in the oven and brown.

  4. Flavor with essence of lemon and serve cold.

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. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a set, creamy custard as it heats.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilize the beaten egg whites.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the topping and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Remove from heat immediately. Once the cornstarch mixture boils and thickens, continued heat can make it stiff, grainy or scorched. Stirring quickly while pouring keeps the custard smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, corn, egg, sugar. 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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