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Dessert

Florentine Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with milk, corn starch, eggs, sugar, and flavored, topped with a stiff egg white and powdered sugar crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Florentine 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. In a pan, bring 1 quart of milk to a boil.

  2. Mix 3 tablespoons of corn starch with a little cold milk until smooth.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg yolks, ½ teacup of sugar, and flavoring to taste into the boiling milk.

  4. Continue stirring until the mixture thickens to a starch-like consistency.

  5. Pour the mixture into the serving dish.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites with 1 teacup of powdered sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the egg white mixture over the top of the pudding.

  3. Place in a 350°F (175°C) oven to brown.

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

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 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).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the pudding that thickens into a custard.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the pudding its body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the custard as it thickens.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam that forms the topping and browns in the oven.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the whipped egg white topping and helps it hold its structure.

The step that matters

Continue stirring until the mixture thickens. Cornstarch must be stirred while the milk is hot so its granules swell and gelatinize evenly; stopping early leaves the pudding thin, and uneven heating can cause lumps.

“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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