Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Mountain Dew 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.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Make the pudding
Crush the crackers and mix them with the milk, salt, and beaten egg yolks.
Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 30 minutes.
Top and finish
Whip the egg whites with sugar until stiff peaks form.
Spread the whipped egg whites over the pudding and return to the oven until lightly browned.
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.
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar 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
- Crackers
- Crushed crackers soak up milk and thicken the mixture into a soft, pudding-like body.
- Milk
- Provides the liquid that hydrates the crackers and sets with the egg yolks into a custard.
- Egg yolks
- Egg proteins set during baking, giving the pudding structure and a rich texture.
- Egg whites
- Whipped into stiff peaks to form a light topping that browns in the oven.
The step that matters
Whipping the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites need to be whipped until they hold firm peaks to trap air; under-whipped or deflated whites will spread flat and bake into a dense, weepy topping.
“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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