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Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A custard pudding made with egg yolks, cornstarch, milk, sugar, and topped with fruit and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and peach work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 781 recipes. Both carry phellandrene, which smells minty. The science ↓

Delmonico Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl until light, then add the sugar and beat until very light.

  2. Mix the cornstarch with a little cold milk, then combine with the egg mixture.

  3. Stir the mixture into 1 quart of milk just before it boils, adding a pinch of salt.

  4. Stir until the mixture thickens well, then pour it into a serving dish.

Bake the pudding

  1. Place the dish in a 350°F (175°C) oven until it can bear icing.

  2. Top with canned peaches or other fruit, mixing the fruit syrup with the custard if desired.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites with 2 tablespoons of sugar until stiff in a separate bowl.

  2. Spread the egg white mixture over the pudding and return it to the oven until light brown.

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 + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  2. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and milk 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

Egg yolks
Enriches the custard with richness and helps it set smoothly.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth custard as it heats.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the beaten egg whites hold a stiff structure.
Egg whites
Beaten to a stiff foam, they form a light topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Stirring the mixture into the hot milk. Cornstarch thickens only when heated, and it can form lumps if it is not stirred constantly as the milk approaches boiling. Keep stirring until the custard thickens evenly.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

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