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Dessert

Corn Flour Custard Pudding

A baked custard made from corn flour, milk, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Corn Flour Custard 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, mix ½ cup corn flour with 2 cups milk.

  2. Add ½ cup sugar and a pinch of salt, stir over medium heat until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

  4. Beat in 2 eggs and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour mixture into a greased baking dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30‑40 minutes until set.

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

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

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

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

  3. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Corn flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth custard as its starch swells when heated.
Eggs
Set on baking to give the pudding its firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and moisture that the custard is built on.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to the pudding's flavour and tender texture.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins firm as they heat, so the pudding must bake until just set; overbaking can make it grainy and watery as the proteins squeeze out liquid.

“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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