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Velvet Pudding

A milk and egg pudding thickened with corn starch, topped with browned meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Velvet Pudding

Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Velvet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Bring the milk to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. Beat the egg yolks, corn starch, and sugar together until light.

  3. Add a little hot milk to the egg mixture.

  4. Stir the egg mixture back into the boiling milk.

  5. Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. Pour the pudding into a baking dish.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Gradually add 2 tablespoons of sugar to the egg whites.

  4. Spread the meringue over the pudding.

  5. Brown the meringue 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the pudding that thickens into a custard.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the pudding its body.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the custard, while whites whip into the meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens. Starch thickens only when heated, and the egg yolks can scramble if the mixture sits on the heat without constant stirring. Keep stirring so the starch thickens evenly and the custard stays 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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