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Dessert

Canned Corn Pudding

A baked pudding made with cornmeal, milk, canned corn, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Canned Corn Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard base

  1. Dilute cornmeal with cold milk.

  2. Stir into scalded milk and cook until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and add salt, pepper, butter, corn, and beaten eggs. Mix thoroughly and pour into a baking dish.

Bake and garnish

  1. Set the dish in a larger dish of boiling water.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the center is firm.

  3. For garnish, beat the egg white with a pinch of salt and pipe nests on top. Return to the oven to set the egg white and finish with a jelly cube in each nest.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Thickens the milk into a set, spoonable custard as it cooks.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding structure and a firm, sliceable body.
Corn
Provides the main flavor and sweetness, and moisture within the custard.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a softer, more tender texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and the eggs set.

The step that matters

Thickening the cornmeal in the milk. Cornmeal must be dispersed in cold milk before it meets hot milk, then cooked until thickened. Adding it dry or to hot liquid causes lumps, and stopping early leaves the base too thin to set properly after baking.

“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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