Skip to main content
Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A custard pudding topped with meringue made from milk, cornstarch, eggs, sugar, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. 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. Mix 3 teaspoons of cornstarch with a little cold milk.

  2. Separate the eggs.

  3. Add the yolks to the cornstarch mixture.

  4. Stir in 6 tablespoons of sugar.

  5. Bring 1 quart of milk to a boil.

  6. Add the cornstarch mixture to the boiling milk.

  7. Boil for 3 minutes or until cooked.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Fold in 3 tablespoons of powdered sugar.

  3. Pour the pudding into a baking dish.

  4. Top the pudding with the meringue.

  5. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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

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

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Milk and sugar 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable custard as it boils.
Eggs
Yolks thicken and enrich the custard; whites whip into the meringue topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the pudding and sets into custard when heated.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the stiff egg whites hold their structure.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the meringue and dissolves easily into the whipped whites.

The step that matters

Boil the cornstarch mixture into the milk. Cornstarch only thickens fully once the mixture reaches a boil and stays there briefly. Undercooked starch leaves the custard thin and gritty, so the pudding may not set properly after baking.

“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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes