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Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, sugar, corn starch, eggs, vanilla, and topped with whipped egg whites.

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 ↓

Delmonico Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Put the milk into a double boiler to scald.

  2. Wet the corn starch with cold milk.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with sugar and stir into the hot milk.

  4. When cool, pour into a dish.

Top and brown

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff with 3 tablespoons sugar and flavor with vanilla.

  2. Spread the whipped egg whites on top and brown in the oven.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the custard sets in.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard, and whipped whites form the light topping.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the custard a smooth, sliceable body.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Stirring the beaten yolks into the hot milk. Eggs can scramble when added to very hot liquid. Pouring the yolks in slowly while stirring constantly brings them up in temperature gradually, keeping the custard smooth.

“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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