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Dessert

Kiss Pudding

A sweet coconut pudding made with milk, sugar, cornstarch, eggs, vanilla, and shredded coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,294 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Kiss Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat 1 quart of sweet milk with 4 heaping tablespoons of sugar in a double boiler.

  2. Dissolve 4 tablespoons of cornstarch in a little milk and add to the mixture.

  3. Allow the mixture to boil.

  4. Add the well-beaten yolks of 4 eggs and boil for about 2 minutes.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. In a separate bowl, beat 3 egg whites with 1 cup of pulverized sugar and flavor with 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla.

  2. Stir in 1/2 cup of shredded coconut and add this to the pudding mixture.

  3. Beat thoroughly and let it boil up again.

  4. Remove from heat, sprinkle coconut on top, 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. Vanilla + coconuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,294 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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 milk into a smooth, sliceable pudding as it boils.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the custard, adding richness and body.
Egg whites
Beaten with sugar to form a light, airy foam that lightens the pudding.
Sweet milk
Forms the base liquid that the starch and yolks thicken.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten yolks. Yolks can scramble and curdle if they meet very hot liquid too quickly. Stirring the mixture well and keeping it at a gentle boil while adding them helps keep the custard smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, egg, vanilla, cream):

  1. Strawberryfits about as well
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutthe original
  4. Raspberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg, vanilla, cream. 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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