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Dessert

Dandy Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with milk, corn starch, eggs, sugar, and topped with 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 ↓

Dandy Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk by placing the vessel in water.

  2. Mix the corn starch with the egg yolks and ½ cup sugar.

  3. Pour the mixture into the boiling milk and stir quickly.

  4. Bake immediately.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites with a capful of sugar until stiff.

  2. Spread the beaten egg whites over the pudding when cool.

  3. Brown in the oven and flavor to taste.

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 + 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 starch thickens into a custard.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the custard its body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and help set the custard, adding richness and body.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff topping that gives a light, airy layer that browns.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the beaten egg whites hold their shape.

The step that matters

Stirring the starch mixture into the boiling milk. Adding the starch and yolk mixture quickly while stirring keeps it dispersed so it does not clump. The starch swells and thickens as it heats, so the custard needs constant stirring to set smoothly.

“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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