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Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, corn starch, eggs, and sugar, topped with a sweet meringue.

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 ↓

Delmonico Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Stir corn starch into boiling milk and boil for 2 minutes.

  2. Beat egg yolks with sugar.

  3. Mix the beaten yolks into the corn starch mixture.

  4. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  5. Bake the pudding.

Top and finish

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add sugar to the beaten egg whites.

  3. Spread the egg white mixture on top of the pudding.

  4. Bake until light 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 that the cornstarch thickens into a pudding.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk as it boils, giving the pudding its body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the custard, adding richness and a smooth set.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the light topping and browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and the meringue topping, and helps the whites stay stable.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Whites must be whipped to firm peaks before sugar is added, since under-whipped foam will deflate and make the topping weep or sink.

“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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