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Dessert

A Corn-starch Pudding

A sweet pudding made with milk, corn starch, sugar, egg whites, salt, and vanilla flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

A Corn-starch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Dissolve the corn starch in a little milk.

  3. Stir the sugar into the remaining milk and heat it until boiling.

Make the pudding

  1. Add the dissolved corn starch to the boiling milk, stirring constantly until it becomes a smooth paste.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg whites and cook for a little longer to set the eggs.

  3. Flavor with vanilla and pour into a mold.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth paste as it heats and gives the pudding its body.
Egg whites
Add structure and help the pudding set when cooked.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the pudding.

The step that matters

Adding the dissolved corn starch to the boiling milk. Stir constantly while the starch goes in. Starch granules can clump if they hit hot liquid unevenly, leaving lumps instead of a smooth paste, and the mixture must come to a boil for the starch to thicken fully.

“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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