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Dessert

Delicate Pudding

A light pudding made from cornstarch, egg whites, sugar, and vanilla, served with boiled custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Delicate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the cornstarch with the cold water.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the mixture and cook for 15 minutes.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add the sugar and beat together.

  4. Pour the hot cornstarch mixture over the egg and sugar, and beat until smooth.

  5. Add the vanilla.

Mold and serve

  1. Dip a mold in water, fill it with the pudding, and set it on ice.

  2. Serve with boiled custard made from the yolks of the eggs.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 hot liquid into a set, sliceable pudding body.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they add lightness and airy structure to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot cornstarch mixture into the egg whites. The starch must be hot enough to be fully cooked and thickened, but the mixture should be beaten in steadily so the whipped egg whites stay airy and the pudding turns smooth rather than lumpy or deflated.

“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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