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Dessert

Butter Scotch Pudding

A simple pudding made from sugar, water, corn starch, and walnut meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 349 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Butter Scotch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a pot, bring the sugar and boiling water to a boil.

  2. Dissolve the corn starch in a little cold water and add it to the boiling mixture to thicken.

  3. Cook until thick, then remove from heat and stir in the walnut meats.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill the mixture and serve with whipped cream.

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 + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together349 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Corn + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + walnuttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Light brown sugar
Provides sweetness and a caramel-like flavor, and dissolves into the liquid to form the syrup base.
Corn starch
Thickens the boiling liquid into a smooth, set pudding as its starch granules swell with heat.
Walnut meats
Adds crunchy texture and a nutty flavor against the soft, thick pudding.

The step that matters

Adding the corn starch slurry. Corn starch must be dissolved in cold water first and added to the boiling mixture while stirring. Added dry or lumpy, it clumps and thickens unevenly, and the pudding may turn out grainy or lumpy.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Peanutfits about as well
  3. Lima beansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, meat. 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.

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