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Corn Pudding

A baked corn pudding made with corn, eggs, sugar, butter, milk, topped with nutmeg and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Corn Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the corn

  1. Split the corn down the middle and shave off the outside.

  2. Scrape out all the juice from the cobs.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar with the butter.

  2. Add the milk and the scraped corn to the mixture.

  3. Pour into a pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Grate nutmeg on top.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until brown.

  3. Serve with rich 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Corn + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set the pudding into a custard as it bakes.
Corn
Supplies the main body and sweet flavour of the pudding.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, giving the pudding a soft, tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the top brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until brown. Eggs set as they heat, so baking too long can make the pudding dry and curdled, while too short leaves it loose. Watch for a set centre and a golden top.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, egg, sugar, butter, milk, 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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