Skip to main content
Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, sugar, corn starch, egg yolks, vanilla, lemon, and topped with a meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks, 4 tablespoons of sugar, and corn starch or mazena together.

  3. Stir the mixture into the boiling milk.

  4. Flavor with vanilla and lemon extracts.

  5. Pour the mixture into a dish.

Top and bake

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add 1 cup of sugar.

  2. Spread the beaten egg whites over the pudding mixture.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until browned on top.

Serve

  1. 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 + 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 body of the custard, providing liquid and richness for the pudding.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness and structure as they set.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture so the custard holds its shape when cooled.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stiff meringue that browns and sets on top.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and stabilizes the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture into the boiling milk. Adding the egg and starch mixture too quickly or to milk that is not hot enough can cause lumps. Starch must be heated to thicken properly, and the eggs must be stirred in smoothly so the custard cooks evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes