Skip to main content
Preserve

Corn Starch Pudding

A pudding made from corn starch, egg whites, sugar, milk, and flavoring, cooked in a double boiler.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 thickened base

  1. Wet corn starch with a little water to make a smooth paste.

  2. Add the paste to boiling water and cook in a double boiler until it thickens.

Fold in the egg whites and set

  1. Remove from heat and mix in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour into a mold to harden.

Make the custard and flavor

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg yolks and mix in the sugar and milk.

  2. Cook in a double boiler until thick as cream, then add flavoring.

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. 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 liquid into a smooth, sliceable pudding as it cooks and gelatinizes.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foams, they add air and a light, airy texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the set texture of the pudding.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, giving the custard a creamy body.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until thick as cream. Egg proteins in the custard set with gentle heat. Keeping the double boiler gentle and stopping when thick prevents the eggs from curdling or scrambling.

“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.

More cornstarch pudding recipes

Chocolate 13 See all 106 →

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes