Skip to main content
Dessert

Kiss Pudding

A custard pudding with a frosted topping of beaten egg whites and sugar, baked until browned, topped with coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

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. Combine part of the milk, salt, and sugar in a pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Dissolve the cornstarch in the remaining milk and stir into the boiling mixture.

  3. Add the egg yolks and vanilla extract while stirring.

Make the frosting and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, then gradually add sugar and lemon extract.

  2. Spread the frosting on the pudding and place it in a 350°F (175°C) oven to brown.

  3. Save a little frosting to moisten the top, then sprinkle with grated coconut.

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

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

  5. Lemon + coconuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 mixture into a smooth, sliceable custard as it heats.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the custard as they cook.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they form a light meringue-style frosting that browns in the oven.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and stabilizes the whipped egg white frosting.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, then add sugar gradually. Adding sugar slowly while beating keeps the whites stable and glossy; if sugar is added too fast or the whites are underwhipped, the frosting can weep or fail to hold its shape in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Bananafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes